I have a different view on this. Boards like the RaspberryPi are just fine as a hobbyist hardware hacking/embedded platform. At $25 to $35 a pop I can buy a bunch of them and put them to different uses.
If you design any small board with a few ICs & a microproc, it can end up costing in the same range or more in parts alone (even if you make a few hundred to sell, per board cost will not be much lower). With the raspi I only have to add app specific logic if needed. Sure, I wish they'd done a bunch of things differently and I wish it was more open and the USB core they used had proper documentation etc. but it has plenty of good stuff I can alreay use that I can't get as cheaply elsewhere. But I'd rather run plan9 on it than Linux. I am attempting a port but don't let that stop anyone else from trying. If you are working on a port or you want to collaborate, please contact me off the list. I can certainly use all the help I can get and there is no point in duplication of effort if it can be avoided.
