Yes, the laptop card has free firmware: https://wiki.debian.org/ath9k.

The one in their phone Librem 5 has proprietary firmware which stays on the card. And it supports more bands.

> Yes, the laptop card has free firmware: https://wiki.debian.org/ath9k.

No, it hasn't. You're confusing driver and firmware, again. What it has, and what you are showing me, is a free driver.

The former is executed on the main processor of your computer, the second on the various chips of your card / device which can run various forms of code. The second can be loaded either from the main CPU (computer), or from some flash or some (P)ROM located on the board or directly inside the chips.

Yes, it has. Sorry for the wrong link. Here is the right one: https://wiki.debian.org/ath9k_htc/open_firmware.

As far as I know, the PCIe-based Atheros 802.11n cards don't have any firmware at all - just hardware state machines controlled by the open source driver.

Where is the line between "hardware state machines" and firmware? Flashability? Existence of programmable storage on the device? Other?

Genuinely curious, I know next to nothing about this space.