Standards compliance allows web developers to spend less time in QA and more time developing new features in THEIR applications. So rather than Microsoft developing one or two new features per year in their browser, Every web developer on the planet can develop one or two new features for their site per year. (Those numbers are obviously terrible and asspulled, but you get my meaning I'm sure).

It's similar to being able to write in higher level languages, (Java, Python) over lower level (C, Assembly). Once you don't have to care if the processor is x86 or Sparc, or if the compiler is GCC or MSVCC you can spend more time working on the actual purpose of your application. (Sorry, I couldn't think of a car analogy)

Remember all those #ifdef's in lots of old C (And many C++ Programs)?, ever had to write the same program twice in assembly, targetting two different processors? Ever written something once in python or java, and been reasonably confident that it'll run on any machine? (Java's stil a bit quirky between JVM Versions, but they're making a real effort at least), By standardizing the "language" (Or runtime environment in the case of most new languages), the productivity of every single person who uses that language improves.

That makes the investment of time by those writing the languages or runtime environments seem very worthwhile to me.

Of course, you'll no longer WANT to be able to process or remember your joyless hell of a life, But you'll suffer it for a good and long time ;)

Also, I'm fairly sure that under OpenBSD at least, they include proprietary device firmware blobs, but the device drivers themselves are open source.

As someone who wants to build an HTPC based on a low power CPU, I can say that I am definitely interested in offloading hi-def video decoding to the GPU, being able to toss a fanless 8500 into a system with an intel atom or underclocked amd-le cpu, and knowing that 90% of the video decoding will be offloaded to the GPU certainly sets my mind at ease when I'm looking at 1080p streams.

Coder Hate like that brought by the shitty, bug filled drivers that ATI has a long history with?

I think ATI/AMD is on the right path, but they have a long history of being on the wrong path, while NVIDIA has always been more towards the middle (Not completely right, but not too badly wrong). It'll take some time before I jump to the ATI Bandwagon as completely as you obviously have.

Don't forget, lots of nightmarish IE specific stuff also "Just Works" for "The Majority", And ask any 64bit linux user exactly how much they love adobe for their support. (I think they have it now, after something like 4 years of waiting or running in emulation, or running a 32bit OS on their 64bit machines)

The magical wonderland I think of is one where anyone on any system can easily watch video online, not just the majority.

I think that in theory, the "free" part could be extremely enticing, after all, Opera, Safari, and IE could all just integrate this, no questions asked, and in this magical wonderland we could have cross platform video embedded in websites that "just works". Realistically though, that'll never happen. IE will support WMV and Safari will support Quicktime, and both will support theora through 3rd party plugins which will only be installed by people who know well enough to use firefox anyways.