Purism has been talking up their work on a free firmware and disabled ME for two years now. They haven't gotten anything working until now.
I like what they're trying to do, and (roughly) how. I bought a Librem 13 and received it a year ago. But my overall impression is that they just didn't have the familiarity and expertise they needed on the software and firmware (and not enough money to buy enough expertise). Thus the slow and long-stalled progress on the coreboot port, the very slow and still somewhat disappointing development of the touchpad driver (which was the only driver they had to do real work on), and the confused/misinformed promises about the ME for the first year or so of the project.
But there isn't an alternative that's better in all dimensions, at the moment.