First of all sorry for the delayed response. Here are the answers:
1. No drivers required. You only need Agent, the cross-platform configurator application installed on your computer.
2. Yes, these remapping scenarios are all possible.
3. I've only used staggered layouts up until this point so it was natural to me to design a staggered keyboard but I'm very interested in matrix keyboards and we plan to design a matrix keyboard in the future if everything goes well.
4. This might be possible. I'm not sure how much SRAM will be available after implementing all the planned functionality.
5. Layers are stateless, so you have to keep Fn pressed to use the Fn layer and so on.
6. Keymaps, however, are stateful, so you can permamently switch keymaps, not having to keep any modifiers pressed. Hopefully this answers your question.
7. The Ultimate Hacking Keyboard is a fully NKRO keyboard and it features diodes in its key matrix so no ghosting will happen if that's what you are worried about.
8. Yes, you will be able to do all of this. As a matter of fact Linux is our primary development platform.
9. Yes, the keymaps and the layers of the keymaps along with all the other configuration settings get permamently saved in to the EEPROM of the keyboard. We also plan to make them easily sharable eventually.