The quoted argument misconstrues the problem, and thus the conclusion is wrong. Others have already mentioned the proof that it's wrong (docs have been released), but I guess I'll explain how it's wrong, since on a superficial level it seems pretty convincing. It says that essentially no technical info can be released, but an HFS is not going to exercise the entire device. You generally can't just go around clobbering a whole device state, especially in a modern OS. In fact, the HFS might only exercise one peripheral block that is unique to the device, but isn't directly connected to the core functionality. Let's call it the Undocumented Verification Doohickey, just for the sake of argument. AMD/ATI can document everything else as long as the UVD block stays closed. Some people might be disappointed by the lack of UVD support, but the core GPU functionality can still be supported just fine.
As for the patent issues, the FOSS world has ways of dealing with that. FreeType had patent-covered hinting code for years, and simply didn't compile it in by default until the patents expired. S3TC support is already available; it's just in a separate library instead of being part of the Mesa tree. Brian Paul has suggested a similar approach for FP textures, and there is already a Mesa branch with FP texture support. In short, work is being done on this. Developers are aware of the issue, and they aren't just throwing up their hands and saying "aw shucks, we can't do anything".
As for the patent issues, the FOSS world has ways of dealing with that. FreeType had patent-covered hinting code for years, and simply didn't compile it in by default until the patents expired. S3TC support is already available; it's just in a separate library instead of being part of the Mesa tree. Brian Paul has suggested a similar approach for FP textures, and there is already a Mesa branch with FP texture support. In short, work is being done on this. Developers are aware of the issue, and they aren't just throwing up their hands and saying "aw shucks, we can't do anything".
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