Has the development of the Neo900 halted or run into serious issues? I wanted to decide whether I buy one when it is finished, but it is already taking quite long.
It hasn't halted and it didn't run into "serious issues" (blockers). It just needs its time. It's a small project, so when for instance it has to provide a webshop so people can make their orders, the R&D is pretty much halted from lack of resources as everyone is focused on that. We haven't taken all such non-technical issues properly into account when estimating needed time and it backfires. However, I think it's not that bad overall - there is slow, but steady progress all the time. See the last news from a week ago: http://neo900.org/news/the-neo900-shop-grand-opening-for-pre...
Also, just so you're aware: you cannot "wait to decide", as it's basically built to order and financed almost completely that way. The moment it goes to production you will have to find at least another 200-300 people interested in buying it, so the second production batch will be possible to happen.
Depending on the type of hardware we're talking about, it's either: already done, hard or very hard.
If you want to go open with hardware, you either:
- decide that you can go with some obsolete specs. Then you only reach the small niche really interested in freedom and openness and pretty much nobody else. The costs and prices skyrocket, because you cannot rely on economy of scale.
- device that you want to provide competitive hardware to what's already on the market, but free. In most of the fields, you will have a hard time to catch up to competitors, as you most likely won't be able to get any funding in the way they did. You'll have to resort to crowdfunding and probably fail anyway, as a very small fraction of projects like that manages to do anything at all - and they're usually the smaller and easier ones anyway.
Also, closed firmware blobs don't pose any threats - any additional ones that you already have even when not using them, that is. If you have a device that doesn't need a firmware to be loaded in order to run, then most likely it already has a non-free firmware integrated on board. For instance: HDD, SSD, SD cards, some cameras, most of controllers like USB or RAID... virtually anything.
By calling people like Theo de Raadt conspirators, you only hurt the cause you think you are fighting for. You won't change the world by that. You can only change it with small steps, by supporting niche projects like Neo900, even if they had to go for some compromises. What differentiates them from others is that their compromise lies far further than what's common in mainstream devices, and only if this iteration succeeds, a new one could in the future, moving that compromise even further towards the ideal state.
Having been involved in Openmoko and related communities for quite a long time exactly for the reasons of hardware freedoms and openness, I really don't see any other way.