From one of the reddit threads where someone from System76 was active, the cool thing to me is how they are aiming to slowly offload functions from the motherboard onto foss hardware. That has started just with the fan controllers and sata backplanes, but it sure to progress further and further, and that in particular is what I like about where they are headed.

I think open hardware is the future, and those who are able to get there first are going to see increasing gains as time goes on. Of course my engineer friends always talk about how you can never verify down to the chip level, but I think there are ways it can be done, the market just hasn't been pressured to do it... yet.

Now if we can just start by getting Amd PSP and Intel ME removed! The first CPU manufacturer to do this is going to gain huge marketshare. (hint hint AMD!)