Does coreboot have an explicit rationale for this? I see http://www.coreboot.org/Binary_situation "While we aim for a 100% free boot process, recent developments (and general unwillingness by some hardware companies to provide specifications) make it hard to achieve" but this does not actually explain their thinking. Compare with Mozilla, which has explicitly said (I'm paraphrasing) that they're doing non-free formats and DRM because if they don't they believe they'll lose market share, and in order to have any leverage they need market share. At least that's a calculation that one can argue about.