To my knowledge, they are making these decisions without what I would consider sufficient legal council (self-filing patents, not having a lawyer specializing in IP on retainer, etc.) That ought to be a warning flag for those wanting to participate with EOMA68.
Rest easy. Pressures being what they are from the subversive Bill Goatse's of this world, have to plan. Greased the pole from two directions with fully GPL'd sub projects already! :)
http://www.gplsquared.com/SoM2/SoM2.html alternative in full KiCAD should failure became an option for whatever reason. Anyone can run with alternative should they see fit.
http://www.gplsquared.com/eoma_boot/eoma_boot.html the Linux images are interchangeable with cubieboard2 so developers can continue even if EOMAs are not physically available to hand.
The final jigsaw is a fully GPL'd openscad based case designs for tablet, netbooks, panel computer, and match box sized gadget. Got me four 3D printers to address that soon enough.
(Robust fully GPL'd applications have also been pencilled in though those require a lot more free time to get things going at this moment in time.)
Also forget to mention to this list - worked out a case design to fully 3D stack and network and wire up 1000 EOMAs within about 1 cubic meter. Total power consumption 5kW, 1 Petabyte SSD storage, Cost half million dollars. Somebody like google, facebook, amazon would hardly blink as they salivate to queue up to buy them - one hopes :)