You might be ascribing quite a bit more leverage to System76 than they actually have here. No one is going to get Intel or AMD to allow open PSP/ME firmware -- AIUI even Google, with the truckloads of chips they buy, isn't able to influence that decision at either x86 vendor. Plus, System76 isn't the ODM -- that's Clevo from what I understand, so their influence on the two x86 CPU vendor(s) will be so far removed as to be quite insignificant IME.
Now, offering something else (ARM, RISC-V, POWER, anything but x86) as a truly open source alternative, then seeing if there was any reaction, might start to apply some small degree of leverage. Definitely there would be more potential opportunities to meaningfully discuss design goals with silicon vendors other than Intel and AMD. Who knows, maybe this could still happen...it'd be pretty easy / cheap to get some POWER desktop offerings lined up based on existing mainboards, and Clevo might be persuaded to do an ARM laptop design based on one of the Chromebook SoCs... ;)
With our baseline blob-free systems, we picked parts that were firmware-free, had open firmware, or could have open firmware written in the future. This is why we don't have onboard 100Gbe, Thunderbolt, or other interfaces that would require relinquishing control of the system to an external vendor. However, the resulting products are quite functional as both PCs and servers, with no real complaints or concerns over the I/O given the multiple PCIe Gen 4 slots available. My understanding is that very few ODMs do this, as they don't want to make that tradeoff, but this is how you apply leverage to silicon vendors long term. And you know what? It's working (outside the GPU sphere at least) -- Raptor isn't the only one pushing hard on these topics from the OpenPOWER side, and so far we've been able to get the silicon we need for our current product lines.
Now, offering something else (ARM, RISC-V, POWER, anything but x86) as a truly open source alternative, then seeing if there was any reaction, might start to apply some small degree of leverage. Definitely there would be more potential opportunities to meaningfully discuss design goals with silicon vendors other than Intel and AMD. Who knows, maybe this could still happen...it'd be pretty easy / cheap to get some POWER desktop offerings lined up based on existing mainboards, and Clevo might be persuaded to do an ARM laptop design based on one of the Chromebook SoCs... ;)
With our baseline blob-free systems, we picked parts that were firmware-free, had open firmware, or could have open firmware written in the future. This is why we don't have onboard 100Gbe, Thunderbolt, or other interfaces that would require relinquishing control of the system to an external vendor. However, the resulting products are quite functional as both PCs and servers, with no real complaints or concerns over the I/O given the multiple PCIe Gen 4 slots available. My understanding is that very few ODMs do this, as they don't want to make that tradeoff, but this is how you apply leverage to silicon vendors long term. And you know what? It's working (outside the GPU sphere at least) -- Raptor isn't the only one pushing hard on these topics from the OpenPOWER side, and so far we've been able to get the silicon we need for our current product lines.