Libreboot and coreboot are trying to open source things on the software side of things (think dd-wrt or openwrt or tomato for routers, custom firmware basically).
With hardware it's a bit of a different story. You hear about attempts from time to time, but getting away from Intel / AMD is really hard.
The suggestions from the article about alternative architectures seem to be our best bet currently.
Alternative architectures is definitely the most pragmatic thing to go for. I was going off on a bit of a tangent from the article and just wondering if anyone has tried redoing the 70's - 90's without trying to be compatible with any existing technology but still learning from the mistakes.
Pure speculation: Any entity that obtains the (financial, other) resources necessary to help facilitate such fundamental subversion is eventually convinced that the status quo is necessary to our survival.
Their attempts will be just that. There's a SHA256 signature required to verify the ME code - no signature, no boot (or boot for 30 mins less commonly). They won't share the keys with just anyone.
