Right now I wouldn't buy one of these because I already have a working N900 and no job right now and cant justify spending $ to replace a working phone with a better phone. But when my N900 fails and cant be fixed, I would be very much interested in a project such as this (as long as it had support for the UMTS frequencies used by Optus here in Australia) as it would likely be the only way to get a phone with a decent hardware keyboard, decent specs under the hood and no locks preventing me from installing the software of my choosing.

Regarding the plan to be Fremantle compatible and to re-use blobs like dialer and SMS and stuff, I think it would be worth while for people who know what they are talking about to go through and evaluate all the blobs that remain closed (i.e. those that dont have either source available somewhere or 100% compatible replacements as part of e.g. CSSU) and for each blob figure out whether it should be:
1.Dropped completly because its not necessary going forward

2.Replaced by something existing or new that does the same job but which is not the same functionally (and is not compatible with) the Nokia blob.

3.Used as-is in the new software stack (e.g. the phone dialer app has been mentioned in this thread as one to reuse without replacing it)

4.Replaced by a re-implementation of the Nokia blob by reverse engineering it and creating a clone (as was done for e.g. osso-systemui-tklock in CSSU and others)

or 5.Replaced by something new but which is compatible with the existing Nokia blob i.e. we reverse engineer the interface between the Nokia blob and the rest of the system then we implement a new blob from scratch (or using existing code e.g. ofono) but which supports an identical interface (and is 100% compatible with the blobs that sit on top of it)

Also are people talking about Neo900 on e.g. IRC or other chat? If so which channel?