I'm not sure your understanding what I'm saying.
The companies designing x86 hardware are uncooperative and as such it is
highly unlikely we will be successful in producing a modern free software
friendly laptop. It'll be too difficult to overcome the issues these
companies have created even with the backing of the community. They have
repeatedly responded in ways that indicate they will not cooperate and even
larger entities with the resources to persuade them have failed to do so.
Non-x86 hardware has its own challenges, but there are already reverse
engineered graphics chipsets that can potentially be utilized in a free
software friendly design. The mali400 for instance might be an option
alongside an Allwinner CPU. How realistic this is I'm still not sure. It may
not be adequately powerful enough to pull off a laptop. However CPUs have
gotten more powerful and it might just work.
I think with a campaign the later non-x86 design is likely a better avenue.
It would potentially offer a number of benefits such as a significantly
cheaper system that more users could get behind. If the laptop is priced high
it will not be able to attract enough attention to pull off the work that
needs to be done. If a cheaper less powerful laptop proved to be a success
then a more elaborate project might be worth attempting. However right now I
think there have been a number of efforts to tackle a higher end free
software friendly laptop and all have failed. The larger community has shown
it doesn't care and as such any laptop needs to offer something different.
One thing that tends to be very attractive to such endeavors is a low price
point.
