I'm surprised no one has backed a project like FPGA Arcade / NATAMI / MiST / etc. yet.
The "not invented here" syndrome. Also - what kind of backing could that be? Money? Maybe the people who do FPGA projects are not interested in being backed by entities who may want them to sign contracts and meet deadlines. Maybe people value their freedom to do things in their own timely matter.
Current FPGA systems available:
* Minimig - made by someone who wanted to prove a point in confrontation with "the community", everything open source, ported to many FPGA families by individuals.
* FPGA Arcade - made by someone who never really was an Amiga person, to be open sourced when Mike finds it to be ready enough.
* MIST - made by Atari people who have a very pragmatic view on Amiga, based on Minimig, all open source.
* Chameleon - FPGA C64 extension by Jens, I am guessing Minimig target by luck.
* Vampire 600 - much like Minimig, made to prove a point by someone who at the time was not really much of an Amiga user, all open source.
Then we have the projects that are more in typical spirit of Amiga...
* Natami - proprietary, no modesty, aimed to become "the new amiga", profit! Fail!
* Apollo core - left over from Natami, smaller focus (only a CPU core), fewer people, less to disagree over. Proprietary. Visions of profit, somehow. Announce first, implement later, regards other projects as "inferior", "competition" and "the enemy".
* Minimig+ - announced again, and then again, and sort of redundant by now. If they decide to develop a board in open communication with the community of FPGA/Minimig/others developers and users, it could be awesome. Must be open source hardware to attract developers and succeed.
