I agree with you. The alternatives at the moment are:
- to buy and use old hardware with libreboot for web browsing, some text editing (this could be good for a big percentage of people) - to use the me_cleaner (https://github.com/corna/me_cleaner) on newer hardware and having a full working modern device to do everything from programming to video editing.. but this require some technical skills that not everybody has. This solution if using a OEM BIOS is a trade off. The BIOS is still from the manufacturer and not opensource. - to use the me_cleaner together with the coreboot BIOS. This solution is very close to the first one but it requires again a lot of technical skills - to buy hardware provided with coreboot and with the intel ME neutralized with the me_cleaner. This solution is at the grasp of all (not considering the costs)
In my opinion if I would look for a new laptop now, since I want to use it for everything and not just for web browsing and text editing, I would check on the coreboot website the compatibility with newer laptops, and I would choose a well compatible one. Then I would buy it and install coreboot and use the me_cleaner by myself. This would save me a lot of money. But I have the technical skills to do this.
Since not everybody has the technical skills to do this, I would not demonize a company that is the only one providing this service. Not everybody wants an old hardware only because on the paper it looks better in terms of freedom but functionally is exactly the same as the newer one with coreboot and the intel ME deactivated.
I think that Purism is doing his business and using marketing to do that. We can like or dislike the way they do marketing. But pragmatically speaking, it also provide the possibility for some people to achieve partial freedom with modern hardware. This is a value.
People here should discuss why other companies here don't invest on the same field.
My answer is that this requires money, in particular to place one or two people full time to port coreboot to the mainboard and so on.
