@SuperDicq @domi @Lili @mei @lnl With Intel Wi-Fi cards, even if you somehow wrote free replacement peripheral software, the card will refuse to run it, as there's a malicious circuit that does a signature check and intel refuses to provide the private key.

In the case that intel released the signing key for all the cards (they won't) and free replacements were written, finally the cards wouldn't be running proprietary software, but the hardware would still be just as proprietary as the Atheros cards (the intel cards have a bootloader and signalling stuff in ROM, the Atheros cards have signalling stuff in ROM).