It sounds like you are assuming a false dichotomy of the following sort: “If a device requires proprietary firmware in order to work, and I don’t provide that device with proprietary firmware, then it won’t have the proprietary firmware it needs to work.”
The mistaken assumption is that the only way for any device to have the proprietary firmware it needs is by you providing that firmware.
In reality, as Marek explained above, many devices already have on-board copies of the proprietary firmware they need in their internal ROM. By providing proprietary firmware, you aren’t adding proprietary firmware to a situation where none previously existed. Rather, you’re simply providing a newer version of the same proprietary firmware that contains bug fixes that the old on-board proprietary firmware lacks. Either way, by using such a device, you are running proprietary firmware. The question is simply whether you will run outdated, vulnerable proprietary firmware or newer, patched proprietary firmware.
If we actually had “regular Qubes” and “Libre Qubes” this way, then, in practice, what would probably happen is that poor unsuspecting newbies would assume that “Libre Qubes” is just “regular Qubes but libre,” not understand that it should only be installed on very specific types of devices (in order to achieve the same results as regular Qubes), and end up severely harming their own security. It sounds like a UX landmine.
It also just seems outright deceptive to advertise “Libre Qubes on supported devices” as somehow “more libre,” when it’s effectively the same as “regular Qubes on regular devices.” You’re simply moving around where the proprietary firmware is, like a shell game.
To be fair, the Qubes OS Project has always been pretty big on “not BSing our users” (as Joanna would put it), which has probably cost us a lot of “good advertising opportunities” like this one.
Yeah, I’m not sure about that. I don’t really want this to become some master index of every project’s definition of freedom. Remember that every link we add is a potential maintenance burden down the line if that page moves or the link otherwise breaks.