A few quick notes on the above.
@jrnelson: I love suggestions and feedback. As soon as I hear people say “I have to have something you’re not shipping”, alarm bells go off and I advise them to buy the product they need, not the product they hope we make some day. I would rather have someone satisfied with another product than disappointed with ours.
More broadly, we’ve promised a lot. We’re going to deliver, but it’s going to take every bit of our ability to do that. If people are expecting more than we promised, I want to reset those expectations quickly.
If you want an offline laser, you should definitely buy one, not buy ours and hope that we change our strategy some day. We might, but if you’re counting on it, you’re likely to make us both sad. : )
Regarding our service: unless we note otherwise, the functionality you’re described when you buy the machine will be free-for-life. So that applies to current purchasers as well.
Regarding the notion that I might be sacked and replaced with someone who thinks differently: You are absolutely correct; that is theoretically possible. That’s why I made the open firmware guarantee. There’s no backsies on that once we ship (and nobody is firing me any time soon).