I doubt anything is going to change for the better as a result of this
effort. They're already showing a willingness to compromise on users freedom
from the sounds of it. It's based on a foundation that misses the point
("open source"). We're already seeing companies like Intel, Atheros, and
others taking steps backwards.
It's time to start designing hardware from "scratch" to whatever extent
that's possible and figuring out how we can cut corners to bring down the
manufacturing costs (not necessarily worse computers- just lower costs- as
you can't manufacturing 200,000 of something for a user base of 5,000).
Once you've achieved that design then work needs to be done to promote the
effort and raise funds for actual manufacturing. Even $250,000 is a lot of
money particularly when you don't have numbers to build off. That is if you
know you can sell 250 of a given computer then it's easy to formulate a plan
to manufacture 250 computers. But when you've been selling x86 systems of
three different classes and the most popular class only has 120 computers and
contains a 1920x1080 screen, etc. then all of a sudden it's not so clear that
the cheaper lower end system you're able to design would have enough demand
to meet the 250 you'll need to manufacture. A wrong move here and there goes
the business. It's one thing for a business to seed the development, but it's
another to take that risk, if the effort fails.
So the first thing that would need to happen is that risk needs to be spread
out. That could be done through a well-marketed campaign, but still, you need
to hit that 250 number. Otherwise it will fail no matter what.
Unfortunately I have no idea for a solution on some issues. Like wifi. All
next-gen wifi chipsets are dependent on proprietary software and a good chunk
of the systems on the market now lock users into these chips so you can't
swap them for ones that are free software friendly.
You can for the moment skip the wifi as its not designed into the SOC, but
what happens when it is? Then it becomes even more difficult. In theory you
could just not utilise it maybe. An internal USB port and an older wifi chip
might work. However you can't get older wifi chips manufactured due to
quantities required and significant increases in manufacturing costs. Do you
want to pay $250 for a wifi chip? That's assuming you have demand at $250 a
chip for at least 100,000 chips a year, maybe more.
