While I agree with you on the point of businesses and achievable goals in general, I do not agree with you on the Neo900-specific "mission creep".

I don't care about the "better infrared" or the "rewrite the entire OS", but to me the "turn-off-able modem", respectively the underlying attitude of "privacy above all else", has always been "the product".
I would have even signed up for the Neo900 if the replacement board hadn't promised any perfomance increase at all, as long as it would have been a phone being able to run Debian.
What I would not have signed up for is a 10x faster device with the same design defect like the N900 of having a "semi-open" OS that would grind to a slow death because proprietary bits keep it from having security issues fixed. If I wanted that, then I would have already bought half a dozen android phones.

Maybe in the end that wasn't an "achievable goal", at least not with the resources that were available. But I wouldn't have known, I know nothing about business.
What I did know was, that this project included a certain risk of not being realized. Maybe I underestimated that risk, but there's nobody else I can hold responsible for my lack of judgement. I knew I had to trust the Neo900 devs on that.

As it stands, the Neo900 currently is sort of like a "technological artifact" to me. I don't actually count on ever receiving one anymore.
I'm mainly sticking to it now, because the money I invested in it doesn't hurt me, and in the unlikely case that one day it will be shipped I will have something that might not actually be useful, but it will be a rare example of the embodyment of an idea I support.
I think of it as some piece of art. You don't buy a Picasso because it's useful.