I believe most of your complaints can be explained by their desire to create the cheapest device possible, but still powerful enough to be useful in an educatio

I believe most of your complaints can be explained by their desire to create the cheapest device possible, but still powerful enough to be useful in an education setting. Corners had to be cut somewhere, and pure open hardware is expensive and hard to come by. If you want to drive the cost down, that typically means using popular silicon, which in turn typically means dealing with companies like Broadcom. Just because it's not 100% open source doesn't mean it has no roots there. I know this is hotly debated in many circles, but in my book it doesn't have to be all or nothing. Personally, I feel they made the right decision for their project. I'd rather introduce kids to linux, computing, and hacking on a device that is relatively open rather than on a purely open device that schools may not even be able to afford.