I’m not worried about “can I, personally, keep this thing running?” so much as “what is the long-term story for the kind of person who buys a turnkey appliance”.

Yes, Umbrel OS is on GitHub and you can already run it on generic NUCs / Pi etc. That’s great. But the value prop of the hardware is the whole bundle: curated apps, painless updates, maybe remote access, maybe backups. If Umbrel-the-company pivots or withers, the repo still being there under a non-commercial license doesn’t guarantee ongoing maintenance, an app store, or support. And the NC clause is exactly what makes it hard for someone else to step in and sell a fully supported forked “Umbrel but maintained” box to non-technical users. So for people like you and me, sure, we can just install it elsewhere; for the target audience of an expensive plug-and-play box, the long-term social contract is still the fragile part.

Ah, okay, yeah, I get you now. I could get behind a splashy section about how users can "walk away at any time" with a roadmap that seems reasonable. I think that fits in with the general ethos of what these things should offer to consumers. I can certainly see why a company wouldn't be keen to advertise "if we die, here's what you can do.", but a way to tell consumers how to gracefully exit doesn't seem so antithetical to a marketing plan, and personally, knowing they've given me an off-ramp does make me more likely to use a thing.