as much as i would like truly open hardware, i don't mind certain binary blobs (gpu etc) if it means a better end product. if that means nda's for a select few core devs or something, so be it.

to make the two devices compatible with existing freemantle, i foresee the need to push updates to the n900 to cater for hardware abstraction. this update will add another layer using tiny bit more memory and a small speed penalty.

i would probably take aapo's route and rebase off current or previous debian release. this would highlight issues with hardware abstraction and closed source packages, which could be replaced by open alternatives taking advantages of features from updated base packages. in the end we could end up with a sort of maemo5.5 image which with a little work could then be pushed to n900 as well.