How big of a community do you need? What's the critical mass? The beagleboard been around for sometime, except it used to run you around $200. You could trivi

How big of a community do you need? What's the critical mass? The beagleboard been around for sometime, except it used to run you around $200. You could trivially put a linux distro on a beagleboard before the Pi even existed. Heck, the Beagleboard Black comes with Debian installed and goes for $55 now. Not too bad. The reality is that the Pi just delivered a very low cost and now they sit in drawers and landfills because Joe Hacker got over the "shiny shiny" aspect of owning it pretty quickly. The same way he has a Wii and a Rock Band set in the basement in a box labeled, "Stuff." I suspect that the slighter higher cost of entry means that things like the beagleboards are in use doing something interesting while most Pis are either junked or running blinkinglights.sh and will never be touched again.