> But I think the FPGAs in products are more like the possible computer > in my microwave oven: nobody installs software in them, so they might > as well be circuits.
Really? All those wifi/raid/cpu/etc cards/chips out there that need "firmware", you think they're not a mix of both microcontroller code and other binary bits that configure an ASIC or FPGA? I am not a hardware expert; I don't know sort of hardware the firmware blobs run on. I will presume you're right. Whether it runs on a computer or an FPGA, either way it's a program. So the next crucial question is, do users normally install programs on that device? For some devices, the answer is no. However, if the firmware is stored in a file on the disk, and the system downloads it into the device, the answer to that question is yes. That is the case where I object to the non-free firmware blobs.