Hi @zeronumbers your post explains the difference very well, I hope many get to read this.
Do you know if engineers or big funds are being directed to free source firmware?
I'm viewing efforts to "free" smartphones and PDAs, and then there is the TALOS II effort that has me confused:
RAPTOR Computing
https://secure.raptorcs.com/content/TL2B01/intro.html

• IBM designed the processor...
• CPU architecture has different instruction sets that do not support the current (legacy) instruction sets?
• Less expensive to go with Libreboot...

Anyway there is a lot of activity for developers and techies to have fun!