Ask HN: Will Intel phones let me release my own phone?

I have my own next gen phone concept that I want to try out.

Will the new breed of Intel phones [1] let me have a debian/fedora/etc like dev workflow or will I have to worry about copyright, etc issues with firmware blobs and stuff like that? If so, how is that allowed with the GPL'd Linux kernel?

[1] http://liliputing.com/2015/03/asus-zenfone-2-launches-in-china-for-158-and-up.html