I think it goes to the other poster's point: "You won't get users until you have something that /does something/"
The RPi was ready to roll out of the gate - they had a working Linux distro from the get-go that actually worked. They also provided really simple instructions on how to get said Linux distro onto a SD card. You can boot the RPi and have it be useful within a matter of minutes.
Openmoko simply never got near enough to working where the community felt like picking it up and running with it.
I don't think Openmoko was premature - it was incomplete. You're not going to get much participation from the community if doing anything useful on your platform first involves fixing/finishing the platform.
You're right. The rpi is feature complete for me. Everything works as expected. I don't have to change any of the platform or OS code. I can simply build on top. But I guess shipping a feature complete smartphone is much harder.
The RPi was ready to roll out of the gate - they had a working Linux distro from the get-go that actually worked. They also provided really simple instructions on how to get said Linux distro onto a SD card. You can boot the RPi and have it be useful within a matter of minutes.
Openmoko simply never got near enough to working where the community felt like picking it up and running with it.
I don't think Openmoko was premature - it was incomplete. You're not going to get much participation from the community if doing anything useful on your platform first involves fixing/finishing the platform.