So they're selling vague promises. Getting everyone to open source their binary blobs (and the Librem has a lot) is highly optimistic at best.

You're right, Purism doesn't offer anything no one else offers at the moment. It looks like they're trying to grow a customer base then use that base as leverage when it comes time to negotiate with OEMs over features, open docs, open firmware, etc.

Since they're not at all transparent on the details about how they will actually achieve true Freedom on modern hardware, and since modern hardware IP is deeply entangled in patent and licensing issues, it's reasonable to be high skeptical of what's going on here.

Then again it can all be a scam which would render anything I just said irrelevant anyway.

They are by far the best except for the Ministry of Freedom [0], which sell FSF-certified, but comparably slow laptops. And they admit that as I mentioned above.

Only after enough users is involved in freedom seeking, it can be possible to demand large companies to provide something we need. In my opinion, Purism do a lot in this direction.

[0] http://minifree.org/

What things did they do beside marketing? What was achieved?

I am not sure whether you consider this marketing, but for me important things are (0) demonstrating the interest of customers in freedom, (1) explaining what's wrong with "ordinary" laptops to the public; increasing awareness in the media [0], and (2) working closely with QubesOS to make this system work on their laptops. Hardware switches are also very good.

And yes, it might be a scam. But might be not.

[0] (1) is being already done by FSF, but to me it looks like it's not enough.