A few vendors have been stopped from shipping binary modules with Linux, notably those linking to certain symbols. Enough vendors have contributed enough to make Linux actually usable on the desktop with a wide range of off the shelf hardware and more and more are announcing day one compatibility or open source contributions. The same is hardly true for the BSDs.

It's obvious Sony is keeping certain drivers closed source while open sourcing other things, and why Nvidia decided to go with an open source driver. It's not hard to understand why, it could be some pressure or a modified GPL2.