"if your wifi card works with free firmware and doesn't require the non-free
one, then you won't be using the non-free, but the free firmware."
I'm not sure this is right. Tails is based on Debian and, for the ath9k_htc,
that distro's wiki page recommends a non-free firmware. It then mentions that
an "Open [sic] firmware for this driver is also [sic] available." For the
non-free, recommended firmware, a ready-built package is made available by
Debian after the user enables the non-free repository; for the latter you
need to build from source, a process which can take several hours on a weaker
computer in my experience.
So if you have a computer with an FSF certified wifi dongle and you are
running Tails, then you're probably going to end up using non-free firmware
even though there is a perfectly working free replacement out there that
should have been the first and only option.
