By "unscrew and remove", I meant in the sense of a piece of hardware. I agree with you that firmware is a set of instructions, hence, software. The intent of firmware, however, is to be treated differently on a day-to-day basis from other types of software, which are routinely started up, shut down, and generally used as applications. Firmware, on the other hand, seems to me to operate on more of a fundamental level, directly instructing and controlling hardware or systems on how to be that particular hardware or system.
I agree with all of that.
The origin of this debate:
antiRepublicrat claimed Compaq reverse-engineered the hardware of the IBM PC.
I corrected his mistake and showed him Compaq reverse-engineered the software (the bios)
antiRepublicrat has been spending days trying to spin firmware into being hardware.
That is the MO of this firmware=software debate.
Petronski and Swordmaker have been spending days trying to claim firmware is not software in support of antiRepublicrat