I'm going to be quite annoying and reply to myself...
So I see before us the possibility of another little box, "smaller than any laptop available today", "a machine tailored for home use". Perhaps this time with another great British entrepreneur's company name printed on it. Make it simple, provide decent documentation and a little spiral bound manual. Make it available to kids, to affordable computing initiatives, and perhaps Mr Sugar could capture far more than he expected.
It seems we are reminiscing somewhat. I will join you, if only to illustrate my point.
I remember programming in those daft languages where you felt clever using four gotos in seven lines, cleverly creating a logic tree that would defeat anyone who tried to understand it. I remember the excitement of controlling stuff with this little box just by typing commands (or sometimes hitting the right combination of keys to create a command - thanks Sinclair).
The most magic thing was the simplicity though. When you have a decent interface to the equipment, and more importantly its i/o, the thing comes alive.
So here's my thought on producing a dev-friendly/child-friendly box. Choose a language - something of the python/ruby ilk - and build a set of scripts for it, which can control the entire i/o of the box. From flashing lights to keyboard, smartcard reader to disk access. If it's all there, and all easy to use, people will write for it. And if they're script based, there will be no open/closed source question. I don't mean prevent people using it as a linux box, just provide an easy and uniform interface for people new to it all to program in. Oh, and give them a manual...
So what thinkest?
Phil