Intel's commitment is to specific products and technologies that it has determined are either in great market demand or are checkbox items in support of its other products. The company has no affinity whatsoever to Free Software or Open Source ideals, and most of its products are closed-source and protected with extremely restrictive licenses. This is especially true in the space at issue here; Intel does not make its firmware available under anything resembling Open Source terms. The same applies to its CPU microcode, most of its specifications, and the large body of tooling used by OEMs and embedded developers (much of which is not only closed but Windows-only). Intel is committed to supporting GNU/Linux distributions offered by its partners or as demanded by the market at large, but in general it remains an extremely closed, secretive vendor.

What's the indication that the forum user in question there is a Verifone employee? That doesn't seem to be obvious in the forum post.