Moglen: How Should the Free Software Movement View the Linux Foundation?

Not all firmwares are the same. The Radeon, Intel and nVidia firmware all have significantly different profiles as far as the complexity and intent. Comparing them is pointless. What matters is how free they are, a small binary blob who's purpose is to perform some initial initialization of registers is completely different than a binary blob that contains the code to render in GL.

Intel and AMD are moving in one direction, a direction that's good for free software. Nvidia is not. That is what matters. Even now nvidia still tends to do a better job on rendering but I have no doubt in my mind that in time that is going to change as the entire AMD and Intel stack moves to free software. It's been shown several times that where the open source drivers are fully fleshed out they are faster than the binary blobs from the manufacturers, even with Nouveau. Particularly as the open source software moves to lower level API's like Vulkan where good open source drivers will shine.