I'm excited to see how this goes. I've been lamenting to friends of late how I don't feel there is anyone out there innovating on hardware/software to compete with the likes of Apple/MS/Google, but I see a ray of hope in puri.sm.
The business plans of Nokia, OpenMoko, Firefox and Ubuntu all depended on selling millions of phones. Built on the ashes of those efforts, Purism appears to have a viable business plan making good profits selling many thousands.
It's the best mobile platform I've ever tried. After all, it was just a tweaked Debian distro.
It's exciting to see Purism might head the pure Linux stack way, not just a de-Googled Android route. I also wish Jolla eventually open sources Sailfish, or gets bought by someone who does this.
OpenMoko - not really, it was major mismanagement in other areas (and some poor luck) that killed it, but AFAIR production volume was actually being predicted quite well.
Firefox OS, Ubuntu Edge - sure.
They should have iterated on this with every flagship phone and push it to the cheaper phones as well.
I was so sad and angry when this never came together. They just spiraled out of control after that.