thats a very fair point, I had not seen anyone else make this one But the problem is that in this case, this functionality was entirely undocumented. I dont think it was intended for programmers.

Now if the firmware was open source, people would have gotten to know about this much sooner even if not documented. Also such functionality should ideally be gated somehow through some auth mechanism.

Also just like how the linux kernel allows decades old devices to be at the very least patched for security risks, open firmware would allow users of this chip to patch it themselves for bugs, security issues.