Though with a username of fsflover, I think you'll be biased.
Also, another relevant thread (that you were even a part of!) discussing the pointlessness of what Purism did to fit the technicalities: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29841267
It's actually worse than I thought. There's the initramfs /lib/firmware loading workaround for the FSF certification of the OS.
But even before that there is code run by the main CPU that loads instructions for the secondary core to load a blob from separate flash memory to pass to the memory controller to initialize it.
All that just to attempt to fit the technicalities of the FSF RYF hardware certification while still loading a blob like every other phone microprocessor.
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It's interesting that I could make a device that burns efuses to make it obsolete and it could still be considered FSF Respects Your Freedom certified.