The site yes, but the news isn't hacker news.
Uh.. I don't think this is hacker news?
HashiCorp just keep digging themselves deeper. Almost feel sorry for them.
No, it does not mean any of the projects you mentioned will be unavailable. None of those projects are free software OSes.
all but a very slight number of niche phones
I'm pretty sure there are a very large number of phone models on the market with headphone sockets.
I'd have to compromise on a bunch of other features
Right. That's the choice. As with everything one buys. And which nobody has taken away.
FOSS ROMs
What do you mean?
Rockchip RK3399(S) is the best you can get in terms of freedom. The rest are much of a muchness.
you can absolutely make custom ROMs/OSes
You can't however arbitrarily update the Linux kernel
So you can't make free software OSes.
the firmware of the CPU
AFAIK, there aren't any mobile CPUs with microcode like Intel CPUs.
and associated hardware
Rockchip RK3399 is the best you can get from my understanding. The newer Rockchip RK3588 requires a non-free blob for the GPU unfortunately.
e OS isn't a free software OS.
I said it's no good for free software OSes, I didn't mention Linux. I'm not sure what you think it means for Linux to support a processor or why you think that's relevant. Linux can be and often is used with non-free OSes.