While I understand what you are saying I don't see how having one of the most Linux friendly laptop manufacturers making a laptop based on the EOMA68 standard would be a bad idea. Let's say hypothetically, they decided to make the most awesome modular EOMA68 laptop possible, dual usb-c 3.1 and the works. Even if they did ship the system with a CPU card that was running Ubuntu on it, the whole EOMA68 standard works on the premise that if you can plug it in, it will work. Therefore, couldn't you just swap out out the CPU card and put any other compatible EOMA68 CPU card in there to enjoy the benefits of a well designed laptop and run your preferred distro instead?
Well if they ship Ubuntu, there are probably tons of hardware parts that require proprietary blobs to work. They will need a very different strategy to make sure that 100% libre EOMA68 cards will work with all hardware. I'd want them to release a RYF-certified desktop to see if they are up to our standards.