Thanks, let me clarify. What I meant was that it is clear to me which of these strategies offers more user control - firmware in a file offers more control than the same firmware burned into a ROM chip. But since RYF currently prefers the latter, and treats it as equivalent to a card with totally free firmware, it’s not clear to me how to best change RYF to describe this situation. So I did not intend to take a stance there on which things RYF should approve, since that’s an additional debate and the post was already pretty long 
And of course as we get more into opinions, remember that these are my individual opinions.
Consider this scenario - what if we were to make a variant Intel ax200 card, where we took the same firmware file and burned it onto a ROM chip on the card? RYF prefers that, treating it as equivalent to a card with free firmware. But as I described above, it’s no more free and has less owner control than leaving the firmware in a file; it does not make sense that RYF prefers this.
How could RYF prioritize these differently? There are plenty of ideas. Should it have “grades” instead of totally true/false? Should it depend on some qualitative assessment of whether we can really assume the firmware is “perfect”? Something else? I’m not sure, which is why I said “not necessarily” meaning I am not sure how RYF should compare the cards. I do feel that it should not prefer the ROM chip version as it does today.
Not sure what you mean here, do you mean both statements are true or both statements are false?