I wouldn't worry about Craig. Everyone in the Pandora community hates him at
this point, and he isn't involved in the development of the Pyra at all.
Also, calling the OpenPandora the "Pyra Pandora" is misleading. The Pyra was
conceived and named long after the Pandora, and Pyra is a (yet to be
released) product, not a company.
As Jade mentioned, the OpenPandora can work with 100% libre software, albeit
running slower because of the lack of hardware acceleration, a bit of work
first to remove the proprietary firmware blobs added for the Pandora's
wireless controller, and a bit esoteric. I did so until the SD card I had
Pandian on stopped working properly (I guess it must have reached its write
limit), causing my system to break in really strange ways.
Interesting to note: the Pandora's internal WiFi sucks so bad that using the
mini wireless adapter from Think Penguin is remarkably preferable even on
shallow practical grounds.
The Pyra will indeed have the same problems as the OpenPandora; I've already
asked this on the Pyra forums. Apparently, there will also be an additional
problem of sound quality suffering from not having some sort of proprietary
software.
But in another sense, the Pyra could be a major step forward. If the default
Pyra OS has its repository split off any added proprietary software into a
"non-free" section, it will be much easier to make it a completely libre
system just by using vrms. I've suggested that this be done.[1] No one
actually behind Pyra development (like EvilDragon) has answered; maybe I
should ask EvilDragon directly.
The Pyra also shouldn't be as dependent on a supplementary source of software
as the Pandora is, since it will be possible to install any software
available in the Debian repository (of the version of Debian the Pyra's
default OS is based on).
So I'm actually quite excited about the Pyra, and I'll be interested in
getting one when it's available. It should be a very decent portable computer
running entirely libre software, even with the missing features.
[1] https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/threads/vrms.76945/
