Agreed - I think if they were really set on this they would release a 'pure' kernel or distribution devoid of any proprietary drivers, binaries, or non-GNU lice

Agreed - I think if they were really set on this they would release a 'pure' kernel or distribution devoid of any proprietary drivers, binaries, or non-GNU licensed code as a demonstration of how a true GNU-'compliant' distribution should look, and we can all see just how little work we can get done on it. This would by necessity exclude any and all access to non-GNU licensed code bases. Any non-standards compliant hardware, or hardware with extended or proprietary functionality above and beyond the standards would therefore not be supported (as it appears even the offer or availability of such software takes the distribution out of contention for endorsement), meaning there would be very little work done in any realm other that the hobbyist world - giving it a rather small subset of the functionality most system users have come to expect from most *nix flavours. Anyway - so the wheel turns... At least GNU stands for something... :)