I don't understand how your analogy relates to what I said. Being able to know what your hardware is doing with the software/firmware is the concern of FOSS (because it doesn't matter if your CPU is a spy), not owning the patents to hardware (unless I'm misunderstanding you). It wouldn't be hypocritical to use FOSS on proprietary hardware if the proprietary hardware maker made the firmware or whatever open. There's no violation of the general ethos there if you're going by someone like Stallman, who is pretty much the founder of the perspective.

The only problem I see is if a company claims to care about the FOSS ethos without making their stuff FOSS. That would be hypothetical and weird, but I've never really seen that. Most companies either do or don't. But even huge companies can't control every component right now, so it's nearly impossible to be totally open in the current state of things. Hardware is absolutely hard as fuck. I haven't built hardware, but it is obviously a completely different animal from software and has challenges that are completely different. I'm more in favor of us all working together to keep moving toward a better world. I love FOSS and use it heavily...on a ThinkPad lol. But like I said, some great people are working on open hardware. It's exciting.