The development of free hardware isn't the big problem. The true problem
is to find a common dominator _what_ to build. The only way I see how
this could work is that somebody decides what to build and who wants
modifications has to make them himself.
This point killed the Riscy project years ago. The initial idea was to
build a MIPS based accelerator for PCs. The accelerator soon turned into
a real motherboard with a R4400. Some people wanted something cheaper,
other peoples wanted to go for an Alpha CPU (insane expensive at that
time aside of the low availability of support chips), there was no
common dominator about what type of RAM system should be used. Another
reason why the project failed was that for a board in small numbers the
prices for the electronic componentes would't have been a bargain ...
At that time my former employer Waldorf Electronics had already agreed to
do all the development for free as we had to design a MIPS board anyway.
Well, the Riscy project never produced anything except email ...
Ralf