Seriously though, software isn't the issue here, hardware is. Anybody with the skills can slap Linux on an old computer and turn it into a server. It's packaging it up into something you can sell to the non-technical that's the real win.
I wish free software advocates would take more lessons from Jobs instead of blindly idealizing Woz.
They are focusing on exactly what you are saying, putting together a UI that non-technicals can use.
> They might, however, buy a pre-built, pre-installed appliance that just needs to be plugged in and have a web browser pointed at it to get started.
Don't forget about setting up the freaking wi-fi network. Apple, Google make it reasonably seamless to setup their devices from an app, say. Most third-party devices aren't as easy to setup. I have to manually enter my wi-fi password in my Tivo, eg.
This doesn't have to be the case, though. There's nothing stopping FreedomBox from selling a pre-made hardware solution that just has the software loaded on it that anyone can load onto a vanilla server of their choosing. (And it seems they actually do this, though it's not obvious from their website.)
Still a lot of work, but not as much as creating your own distro from scratch.