> and now they've shat all over it, and lost many potential customers.
Yes, I'm sure people are turning away in droves from the most competitive AMD processor in a decade because they won't open source their version of ME.
Not in "droves", you're right. BUT, there is a very small, privacy-conscious, vocal minority that does not want an obvious backdoor hiding in their CPU. I am one member of that minority, and I won't be purchasing from AMD again until they right this situation.
It's similar to the gaming enthusiast market, though a lot smaller. You can market to that small segment for a big win, because gamers will shell out for the newest GPUs, talk up the hardware online, which leads to increased sales. If AMD would see the benefit of working with this privacy-conscious segment of the market, I believe they would also see, not a major, but also not an insignificant uptick in sales.
Yes, I'm sure people are turning away in droves from the most competitive AMD processor in a decade because they won't open source their version of ME.
/s