I supported Omnia Turris project on indiegogo, their goal was 100k, they reached over 1.2M by the end. I think the open source (hardware + software) high end router is a bigger niche than opensource phone. Wish them best, this might be the FirefoxOS/UbuntuPhone we were waiting for!

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/turris-omnia-hi-performan...

Would an Open Source router have all the app ecosystem requirements that an open source phone may have though?

I am not sure I want to pay hundreds of dollars for a phone I cannot check my bank account on.

On the other hand, Ubuntu Edge tried to raise $32 million. These folks are trying to raise $1.5 million. Seems like a much more reasonable goal.

Reasonable in that it's easier to raise, but is it reasonable in that it's enough to do what they want to do?

Right, and they did raise 12 million.

To be honest, you can't say that was much more polished product soft+hardware as they never made one.

On the other hand, if they could raise 12mil I don't see why wouldn't people back this to 1.5 and more. While it certainly will have its issues we certainly can produce such device and it is going to be alternative.

There are a lot of failed FLOSS hardware tries but people should never give up hope and as said, we can produce this one for sure and by we I mean entire community - FLOSS people and devs, average Joe's, people who care about privacy, security and freedom of them, their families and friends and people who are simply fed up with iOS/Android state.