It also seems silly to me this idea between "tainted" and "clean"
    oses, such as Open and gNewSense, respectively.  Take for example
    a user that runs Ubuntu [GNU/]Linux but proscribes to your free-only
    philosophy.  They don't have to install the adobe flash plugin
    (which I believe is still a binary of sorts.) They can choose not
    to.

The Adobe flash plug-in is non-free software, and people should not
install it, or suggest installing it, or even tell people it exists.
That Firefox offers to install it is a very bad thing.

I've been trying for a couple of years to get going a modified version
of Firefox that won't offer to install any non-free plug-ins, but we
don't have enough people to make this work very well.  If you would
like to help, please let me know.  It is an important project.