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Why should drivers necessarily run in the kernel? With appropriate abstraction for interrupts, DMA, etc. much of the work could be done in userland.

That’s true, but it’s AFAICT a separate question.

The question I was responding to was: “accepting that, rightly or wrongly, Linux drivers run in kernel mode, does it make sense for them to be in the source tree?”

The main downside is that a bad/buggy driver can take down the entire system.

That's a problem with the architecture but a reason for having the drivers in the kernel. It means such a case will be handled as a regression and fixed as opposed to the driver just never being available again.

Linux would have beaten Windows if it wasn't for that.

But at what cost? I don't want to run Linux with non-free drivers. That's not the point.

That's cool. On the other hand, I would love to have a stable API for drivers so manufacturers can release their drivers. That has been taken from me, and now Linux will never be a real choice for me without good GPU drivers, as an example.