Non-geeks will never hear anything about this project.

I expect that charging a battery is a hardware function that will work independent of software.

I expect that an OS-maker will first focus on getting hardware to work and later on getting software to work.

I expect that when somebody says "Openness. It works." a better example is given than this to make people enthusiastic about openness.

This is nothing more than a hobby project. Impressive, cool, but unusable for daily use

Apparently this OS plays some role in charging the battery on this device (seriously shocking to me).

I am a big fan of Thom and mostly agree with what he writes. But this time I didn't so I voiced my opinion. He didn't seem to like it and his responses were so-called clever one-liners instead of actual on-topic related answers.

The average customer will start to associate "open" with "not working".

Right now they think "open" means "you can install stuff without paying for it, hahaha".

they would all turn their back on openness and say "closed gives us working stuff, open is far inferior".

I don't like this particular project. It mentions this "Main goal is to make clean, fast, stable and battery friendly rom" and they make other claims that make it sound like they care most about hardware support (source: http://polishblood.pl/?page_id=31) but from your comment about not being able to charge (still waiting for your source for that) it is clear that they aren't there yet. "Openness works" isn't a suitable conclusion for this stage of the project. If many people jump on board and actually can reach the project goal you could conclude that "Openness works" but not yet.

The problem is - this is EXACTLY how open source development works

3. This article just falls under the "look, I got a webserver running on my coffeemaker". It shouldn't be pointed to as a good example of openness.

It doesn't have to be closed or open, I want things complete.

Sorry, If I release software, open, closed, for fun or for project, I will make sure it damn well works.

Can we stop believing in the million man army fallacy.

Most successful open source projects are funded.

So the phone part of the phone doesn't work ...

I think they did the right thing for Android but they got some criticism because of their approach. That criticism has died down as you said because Google went back to release early release often with version 4

"Openness works" isn't a suitable conclusion for this stage of the project. {...}
If many people jump on board and actually can reach the project goal you could
conclude that "Openness works" but not yet.

And then you change the topic from general openness

So am I right to assume that the main reason for this article was to prove
that Android was open?

That isn't the point I was making and you know it.

Without some sort of commercial backing (even if it is paid developers that use the software and add features even though that isn't their main role) the project is doomed in the majority of cases.

Apparently this OS plays some role in charging the battery on this device (seriously shocking to me).