1. Ben claims that the license scheme is to protect customers from fraudulent mainboard manufactures. Ignoring for a second the inherent below-the-belt quality of this justification, what makes a group of developers the court and judge of the market? Next thing that might happen is that developer x is unsatisfied with the ethics of Hyperion and blocks his software to run on the A1. I don't think we should enter the road of judging competitor's ethics.
2. It was claimed that the scheme is used to protect IP by complicating piracy with a hardware device. That's a perfectly valid approach but it is just unreasonable to charge the mainboard manufacturer for a service that primiarily benefits Hyperion. Many of us are developers, none of us requests special chips on mainboards. If we feel the need to protect our software, we use cheaper methods that work reasonably well. In the case of A1 and Pegasos mainboards, the unique MAC address of the built-in ethernet controller would be a good hook for an unlocking procedure.
3. Some claim that Hyperion has to cover high development costs, in a small market, and that justifies milking money from the mainboard manufacturer, on top of charging customers for supplying the OS. Considering that the mainboard manufacturer has had considerably higher development costs, I don't see the moral justification for the software side charging the hardware side. One side gets an OS, the other side gets a platform, costs and benefits are evenly split, and the money comes from the customers alone.
