That is one way of seeing it. Another way is that I am a customer buying a product. And I expect the team building the product to approach it as a business. Not as an ideological mission.

Running a business includes setting yourself achievable goals and sticking to them. A good example is Chen and his Moto keyboard. He set himself an achievable goal, said exactly what he would deliver and resisted interference. And there you go - a result!

I believed and still believe that "an N900 with a faster CPU and more RAM", as per the poll question at the top of this page, was an achievable goal. It was all the "better infrared", "turn-off-able modem" and "rewrite the entire OS" mission creep that eventually killed the project.

Sure, by all means, build that as the next project. You cannot jump a mountain in one big leap. You climb it step by step.