This is pretty simple: I happen to have talked with the ThinkPenguin folks at enough conferences to know that you won't ever find a hardware team more dedicated to and supportive of software freedom. I don't otherwise know them, in that the only interactions I've had were around software freedom issues at relevant events. But it's clear that they never make any choice to compromise anything in terms of freedom if they have an option otherwise. In other words, they will get you the most free new stuff that you can find, even though that sometimes means the thing isn't completely free.
ThinkPenguin would never choose a less-free option when a more-free option is available, and they put in real time and effort to increase the amount of freedom in their products. In other words, you can trust them. You're not going to find a non-free aspect of ThinkPenguin products where they had any chance of doing better. They wouldn't ever do anything non-free themselves (like where their actions make something non-free). They're also very knowledgeable and friendly folks, so if you want to learn about the challenges of getting any particular non-free sort of hardware, you should ask them about the situation. They can probably explain the situation to you and what the status is overall. One of the main ThinkPenguin folks is also the main person behing https://librecmc.org which is one of the few 100% free GNU-certified systems listed at https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html So, again, ThinkPenguin folks are of the highest caliber for free/libre values. Hope that answers your questions. Cheers, Aaron Wolf co-founder, Snowdrift.coop