There is a lesson in this that's not being talked about...
The crowd might be loud, but not yet have the financial depth to be all that effective w/that noise.

That been the story of many open source efforts, including the one(s) that started and maintain this community. Without the depth of financial resources that either established companies or a series of significant investors back, there's just not enough to start the effort. There's enough in these efforts to push them forward, and even help them change direction, but probably not to start.

In this, does anyone see the irony in Nokia not moving forward with Maemo (not MeeGo, before the merger)? The Ubuntu Edge sounds a lot like a Maemo project that started with a software-only vision that someone thought hardware could be applied towards to answer how it gets into the market.

And this is all from someone who would have liked to see the Edge come to pass; if for no other reason is that throwing all that hardware at Ubuntu Mobile would have possibly hidden some of the finer details of the UX that aren't being worked on as much as other parts of that ecosystem.