Those who want a 'free system' and think this is just an overpriced generic system don't seem to get that your financing the people who are working on supporting free software. It may not be a free BIOS directly. It may be more indirect. Open-PC may in turn finance the free BIOS project to port it to a single motherboard IF they get manage to sell enough of the first generation system. It may not happen for years though. It may take many different almost free systems. And yea- you could go and build your own system for less. But then you wouldn't be supporting free software and you'd have to spend the time building the box yourself, figuring out which hardware will work with GNU/Linux, finding work-arounds when it doesn't, etc.

That being said for those who care about freedom www.thinkpenguin.com is designing systems around freedom for those in the USA. Taking conscious clearly defined steps so your hardware is fully supported with any distribution you choose to use. No chipsets are used that lack free drivers or firmware. Systems ship with Ubuntu for technical reasons due to GNewSense lacking up-to-date drivers. These systems are also geared so your grandparents can use them. They ship with plug-ins that assist non-technical folks navigate the web on GNU/Linux when sites aren't compatible (flash is needed but hard to install, real is needed and hard to install, DRM content, spyware like printer coupons, etc) and so on.