I hope they are able to create a free RIL for whatever modem they choose (in time).

It's just that I have seen projects delay making an important decision by rationalizing that there is not enough information and that the decision can be made later.

Then it turns out that the vital piece which fits the requirements does not exist at all (or does not exist for small time customer), or is incompatible with the architecture which has a lot of resources invested in.

Not saying that this will be what happens and most likely Librem team are already well aware of this risk, but it is certainly a possibility.

Based on playing with my little adafruit cell chip I have, I can talk to it pretty simply by sending it standard modem commands. I don't know how this exactly lines up with a more modern phone but it's pretty cool. You could theoretically talk to it with something like this too

https://geoffg.net/terminal.html

The problem is not knowing if it will work in my region and on my network. It's a rather big caveat for something with open preorders.