No. Atheros ath10k chipsets are not free software friendly. They depend on
non-free firmware currently. I would also advise against the cheapest Atheros
cards on eBay. They don't work well and will cause problems with power
management. I also recommend staying away from Atheros combo cards. The
bluetooth chips in them are dependent on non-free firmware as well. Most
other 802.11n atheros cards are probably OK.
h-node can be flaky in some areas from what little I've used it.
Unfortunately vetting hardware can be trickier than it initially seems as
there are a variety of circumstances where something will appear to be free
software friendly and isn't actually free software friendly.
I've never been a fan of databases because they just don't work that well for
a variety of reasons. However that said h-node is better than any other
database for one reason alone: it attempts to eliminate hardware that is
non-free and such hardware can create both technical and ethical issues for
users.
