I was reading this article on the Ubuntu Developer Summit and found this quote:
However, Shuttleworth says that "Feisty will actually warn you that you're running proprietary drivers and point you to alternative hardware ... so you're better educated for your next hardware decision. I don't expect this to be very popular with Nvidia or ATI, or with manufacturers of proprietary-only Wi-Fi cards, but of course the easiest solution for them is to open source their drivers."
While I'm not certain of how well this will work, shaming hardware companies in general is a great new tactic in helping the situation.
So far most peoples experience with closed-source binary drivers is typically one of these:
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"Oh that's a shame Linux doesn't support my card." A common misperception about the whole issue.
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Attempting ( and often failing ) to getting the binary drivers to work.
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Holding true to your Open Source ideals and not using the binary driver.
Maybe as the user base of Linux on the desktop increases and more users become aware of this situation the hardware companies will come around.
