You can fry the hardware even now, if you set fan curve incorrectly, or create some other power management mess. Opening up firmware isn't really affecting that.
In the end, opening it up isn't any worse than opening up the kernel driver to begin with (you could apply similar arguments to that). And AMD were OK with it, and from what I've heard, DRM is really the main issue here. As usual, media lobby poisoned the technology for us.
I think you won't be able to override the emergency shutdown thresholds in the firmware.
I'm a big free and open software advocate. I primarily use free and open source software, and try to open every line of code I write. I'd like to see the firmware on the open like the drivers. I just wanted to talk my understanding of hardware. If my comments sounded otherwise, I'm sorry, my bad.
I've heard from Linux AMD engineers, that they supported the idea of opening up the firmware, and opposition to it wasn't based on the concerns you listed, but primarily driven by DRM (and the need to split it into two variants which is an extra effort).
That's possible & I'd love to see the firmware source code and play with it TBH. I also like AMD because of the efforts they make to open themselves as much as they can.
BTW, I'm not employed by AMD or ATI. I was just one of the independent members while the GPU driver beta testing was closed to outsiders.
DRM always complicates things, but always get broken at the end. Also, it's always a crippling pain.
In the end, opening it up isn't any worse than opening up the kernel driver to begin with (you could apply similar arguments to that). And AMD were OK with it, and from what I've heard, DRM is really the main issue here. As usual, media lobby poisoned the technology for us.