Ubuntu's Free Software Laptop A No-Go?

Back in July, Mark Shuttleworth asked the community whether they wanted a high-end free software laptop. This theoretical laptop would "just work" with Linux through open-source drivers and everything down to the BIOS (and eventually, the firmware) would have a free software license. It's going on six months later and we haven't heard any update on the possibility for this high-end free software laptop. However, with yesterday's announcement of Dell adopting Ubuntu 7.10 with DVD support, we decided to follow up with Mark Shuttleworth regarding any free software laptop plans.

Simply put, Mark Shuttleworth has been gathering interest from the Ubuntu community and so far he doesn't believe there is sufficient interest to warrant a more detailed analysis in creating a high-end free software laptop. There has been no activity on the free-software-laptop mailing list and its Wiki page hasn't been updated since October. Hopefully things will change in the future, but for now it looks like this plan is a no-go.