Yeah, the pre-installed software is usually crap. But there are plenty of modded ROMs for the more popular boxes. And you can't beat the price as an OEM product

Yeah, the pre-installed software is usually crap. But there are plenty of modded ROMs for the more popular boxes. And you can't beat the price as an OEM product -- just put your own software on it. The source release policy has gotten better in the past year. Mainly due to Google (Chromebox), Hardkernel (ODroid) and others kicking the manufacturers. At least they're upstreaming their drivers now. They have to clean up ~1M lines per SoC family, that'll take some time. And userspace is not just blobs anymore. For example Amlogic regularly publishes a (working!) buildroot at http://openlinux.amlogic.com:8000/download/ http://openlinux.amlogic.com:8000/download/ . Microcode for VPU or Wifi still comes as blobs.