I won’t challenge any of that and certainly I’m not suggesting I know for sure that bad decisions were made (especially since we have benefit of hindsight).
My “wish” is just about taking a longer term iterative approach to reduce risk. Perhaps you’re right that the whole thing would be infeasible without all open hardware - I’ve no idea.
But personally a Linux phone with hardware kill switches would have been enough to sell me on L5. It’s the insistence on non-proprietary/no-blobs hardware that I’m questioning the value of (there’s the flame bait part lol). It’s preferable, but it seems like it has been extremely difficult to do without an existing customer base, so was it worth whatever additional risk it adds?
I worry that maybe some obscure parts could be discontinued just due to passage of time and manufacturers moving on. Of course I know !@#$ all about hardware stuff, so maybe that’s not as big a deal as I guess. I do know that in software, choosing a much more “niche” library or tool tends to place you in a more risky support situation long term than using something extremely popular. Likewise, a hardware component that only a small number of low volume devices use seems like a good candidate for cost cutting and discontinuation.