> So who would want such a thing?
Me. I think this is an excellent idea, and I'd have gone to £100 or so for one of these 10. It's good to give back to charitable organisations from time to time.
But the ones on eBay are well out of my price range...
> Buy a beta board, reverse engineer it and start flogging your own version
These are exactly the people who would *not* be bidding for an early version.
If you head over to the RaspberyrPi website, there are lots of photos of the boards, including hi-res shots of the unpopulated board. Someone trying to clone the RaspberryPi would start from there - it's a board with a very low component count, after all.
> Or worse: find that the copies have been improved over the original.
Why would that be worse?
The original will be performing as specified. If someone finds a way to improve that spec without increasing the board price, those improvements will doubtless find their way back into the R-Pi units.
Vic.