So what has been the result of accepting that so called “pragmatism”?

Now you can’t even boot a computer because they put the 1st stage bootloader in the GPU firmware…

Is there a GPU binary?
Yes. The GPU binary also contains the first stage bootloader.

This is fishy, and it may be a first attempt at trying to circunvent software freedom, after all, if you accepted the firmware for the graphics card, surely you’ll accept the firmware to boot.

Sure you can probably boot any OS from the SD card, but it may very well be running under an hypervisor… you may be in your own little VM and someday, that might bite you when you least expect it.

Maybe this doomsday scenario is not happenening with the Raspberry Pi, but it seems, to me, like the proverbial slippery slope in action. You ceded, now you have to cede a bit more, and when you notice, you can’t go back up again.

This is why I won’t buy a Raspberry Pi.

This so called “pragmatism” has resulted in an even worse situation than before and I won’t support that, no matter how cheap the device is.