Chapman Flack:
> How would you approach, for example, the Atheros HAL?

Just using or developing open-source solutions - from OpenBSD's ath(4) man 
page:

"[...]
HISTORY
The ath device driver first appeared in FreeBSD 5.2 using a binary-only 
HAL module which was ported to NetBSD 2.0.  The driver using a free 
HAL-replacement first appeared in OpenBSD 3.7.

AUTHORS
The ath driver was written by Sam Leffler, and was ported to OpenBSD by 
Reyk Floeter <reyk@openbsd.org> who also wrote a free replacement of the 
binary-only HAL. [...]"


> How do we find a balance?

As "we" don't need blobs, there's no need to find a balance. Let's 
concentrate on making things possible with open-source software - and 
forget about the rest!

Ciao, Mark Weinem