"You don't get it. It's conflicting with the work others are doing. There is
a certain amount of money that people who care about free software have to
spend on laptops."
I believe your thinking is too narrow and you are too overprotective of the
small market that you see before your eyes. Instead of seeing other RYF
hardware-projects as contrary to your business you should put your effort
into supplying and marketing your own, like that very good refurbished
router, that will help the public to escape proprietary solutions today.
What you don't get is the following: One person always has limited financial
resources but s/he might know other people who are out looking to buy
hardware. I always recommend and help install free software for friends and
try to teach them to accept no less than 100 % freedom. Then, when they use
this system (since I quite often manage to persuade them), which might be a
thinkpad or a macbook2,1 with Trisquel, they usually feel very good about
themselves in that they've chosen freedom over convenience. This, I believe,
will affect their thinking in the future and they will influence others as
well. So the "people who care about free software" will become more in this
way.
The most important thing about the libreboot project, in my view, is its
strong principled stance and showing that complete freedom in your computing
is not just a dream but something very real that can and should be demanded
today. Your routers are actually similar in this respect, but your case is
not at all as strong since you're also recommending non-free distros like
Ubuntu. Most people I know who have used Ubuntu in the past have later moved
to OSX, because Ubuntu never taught them to value their own freedom but only
to hate Windows.
Finally, I would recommend, for your own sake, that you stop attacking
important projects like libreboot, because this only reflects badly upon
ThinkPenguin. If you don't have an RFY laptop, then continue to sell routers
and adaptors. When you do have a laptop, then get it RFY certified and regain
much of the respect that you've just lost. Oh, maybe you should rename your
business then as well, to start fresh.
