Well, no. They didn't 'fight' for that, they complained about it. For a while they decided that LVFS wasn't a right fit and went with their own tool and infrastructure[0].
To quote:
" I then got told that I’d made the LVFS and fwupd more complicated than it needed to be, and that I should have adopted the infrastructure that System76 had built instead. This was all without them actually logging into the LVFS and seeing what features were available or what constraints were being handled." [1]
But they didn't 'fight' for it. Richard Hughes fought for it. And even more than that; he implemented it, which is what counts.
> That... doesn't sound like evil to me?
Well, no. Spreading FUD on the other hand could be considered - if not evil - then at least somewhat mean[2]
> If anything, this actually makes me want to get a System76 laptop.
That's awesome. We need more people buying custom Linux hardware. The more, the merrier, the lower the costs, the better the support.