Nevertheless, the first thing the driver for wifi in my laptop does is load up a big firmware file from disk, caused to be shoved into IC RAM, and then proceed to connect to the network. That this process could somehow become more free by embedding a frozen firmware image blows my mind.

And it's not like I haven't seen what the other side looks like. The Broadcom "full MAC" chipsets are also supported, with their remotely exploitable firmware. But those are also "fully" free. Hurray.