Does this sound like people who rely on this to make a living or like individuals who work on this as a passion project (like pretty much anybody else in this community)?
not even individual computers, while serving hobby customership, is being run as charity. as long as one dedicates a finite amount of his time to what is his hobby anyway, as in case of software, and then shares it with others, it is one thing. but as soon as you yourself need to make considerable investments, as in case of hardware development, production, retail and service, if you wouldnt expect return at least at some point in the future, it would be straight out giving money away to strangers. i have hard time to believe anyone in hardware branche is operating like that, not in amiga, not even in os4 sector.
edit: after consideration the closest to what i describe above is probably majsta and his vampire boards, still he resonably tries to keep his investments covered, even if certainly his dedicated time isnt any close to generate return. from this perspective, as own development acube boards are probably being sold at some discount, which is possible as long as it is as an "in house" development. in contrary to that aeon initiatives seem to be based on a sort of shares, sold to fans with the hardware they purchase. not shares on the company though, but rather contibutions to finance certain hardware projects.