I agree with your points about what people want / expect from Salesforce. Would kind of be cool to see a CRM have AppExchange + SF data model interoperability.
While being able to update the platform seamlessly without breaking that logic.
If they had a way to quickly spin of LOB apps like Salesforce does, and had implemented a CRM on top of that... I'd say they would be much more apt drawing the comparison. Particularly if that doesn't require code to do. I know a LOT of companies that would pay dearly for such a hosted platform, GPL or not.
I absolutely love Windmill. The ability to stitch scripts together into workflows is great.
The vision is definitely to have something extensible and more powerful than force.com ; we aren't there yet because we need to build strong foundations before that. We already try to separate our business apps from the core engine in the code base to learn what will be the right api and get ready for that next step when it's time.
1. IT is not your customer. The business is, and they don't know how to write code. Based on what I saw thus far; this is your biggest weakness. The only way to extend the platform at the moment is to self-host and write code.
2. Avoid baking crazy logic into the system now that you'll be unable to fix later *cough* SF 'standard' objects *cough* that will behave in very weird ways.
2(a). Person Accounts look like a good idea. But, they aren't; and never will be. They just create a lot of complications later when someone gets married or starts a business.
If they had a way to quickly spin of LOB apps like Salesforce does, and had implemented a CRM on top of that... I'd say they would be much more apt drawing the comparison. Particularly if that doesn't require code to do. I know a LOT of companies that would pay dearly for such a hosted platform, GPL or not.