Nonfree drivers are not OK.
Nonfree BIOS/EFI programs are not OK.
Nonfree kernel blobs are not OK.
We may use them out of necessity and pragmatism (some nonfree software is better than 100% nonfree software! an Arch user still has more intact freedoms than a Windows user), but we should still reject them ideologically and remember that they are tolerated but not accepted.
The same also applies to copilot. I've trained myself to give it prompts to generate code that matches what I would've generated by hand years ago. But without copilot, I wouldn't program. Simply not practical.
Why? If a vendor sells a fingerprint scanner or something why do they need the driver to be closed source? Why does somebody tweaking the source bother them?
I've never really understood this. Sure, Microsoft word needs to be closed source but why a driver?
Plus there's just a lot of belief in the nonfree circles that the software freedom movement is just religious zealot hippies who think software should never be paid for and that microsoft programmers should work for free and starve, and that anyone who does develop novel software should have it immediately ripped off and copied by competitors and make no money because capitalism is bad.
(I'm being a bit hyperbolic but not much.)
If I fix a bug or desire some new functionality and implement it for myself, am I free if I cannot legally share it with my neighbors? Certainly not.
Also depending on exactly how they release the source, you may still not know that's what the blob is actually doing. I suspect many vendors, even if forced somehow to provide source, would try to not allow (or make very annoying) building it or signing it. And if you can't build it yourself, or if you can but can't run it and the build isn't bit-perfect reproducible, then you can't know the blob is actually the output of building the source.
You could decompile but let's be real, if security researchers looked at Heartbleed not once but twice, specifically in the context of it being a bug, and both times asking if it's a security vulnerability, and said no - then I am not going to believe that a human inspecting decompiled machine code is going to be very good at finding well-hidden malware in blobs.
> people can readily find these nonfree packages by browsing Debian's online package database and its wiki.
Today, I am using Debian myself and avoid nonfree packages knowingly. However I am glad that FSF keeps reminding users about it. Note that they do not prohibit the usage of Debian. They just don't endorse it.
Why is it unethical?
Would it be unethical to be required to use an entirely mechanical machine that was still covered by patents or trade secrets?
All these questions are answered in book "Free Software, Free Society" (with better explanations than I can give).
> mechanical machine that was still covered by patents or trade secrets
I would say, yes, it would be unethical, too.
The idea that non-free software is unethical and should be abolished is the bedrock of all of the FSF’s philosophy, and is held almost as a religious view for RMS and his adherents.