It will be interesting to see if the Debian influence will promote the availability of a wide variety of architectures, including the options to load non-free firmware. From the GNU/FSF standpoint, this is at its core a GNU project, and GNU promotes freedom, free software and the rejection of non-free code. If a wide array of hardware support emerges, it will not come from the GNU portion of the project, where only either "freed" hardware (via coreboot, etc) or hardware with open specs is the target. Please note that "hardware" does not mean "system" - likely you can install on any number of systems that include lots of "closed" and unsupported hardware, but where you go from there is up to you...
I love Ian and I think of the folks that have drifted from _strict_ FSF/GNU practices, I think he's the most conscientious engineer who still keeps those values in mind.
I have my GNU-only systems, but due to my career in commercial and government software, I've just become comfortable with mixing free and non-free software.
Nothing has pleased me more than seeing this update to GNU Hurd.
http://www.nongnu.org/thug/gnumach_hardware.html