Perhaps some do. I don't - proprietary software is never a solution -and have removed such from my coreboot system.
For all cases I can think of other than this one in current times you are quite right. However, in this specific case the free hardware community are bootstrapping free hardware replacements for proprietary hardware. This is IMO entirely analogous to RMS bootstrapping the GNU project using proprietary development software. However, I quite understand if YMMV.
