Frank -
> So the real question is whether we want to do that, whether in the
> particular cases there's in fact any doubt, etc.
In making the list, I left off all cases where I had any doubt.
I am not perfect, but I have plenty of experience using and writing
firmware of many kinds. I would be very surprised if any of the
listed firmware is not derived from a human-legible design file of
one form or another.
So while it is perhaps a polite excuse that "we don't know for sure
if these thousands of bytes of hex code were ever compiled from source",
no sane person would bet against it.