The only thing missing for this is more complete qemu support, and qemu is an OSS project. The rest of the infraestructure is out there and in fact someone booted Diablo in qemu a year or so ago.

What is missing for qemu to be able to emulate a N900-like board? CPU documentation? Board documentation? Or just plain man-hours?


Note that either way I don't see most of your points, since an ARM emulator isn't going to give you all the hardware the real device has, like the accelerometers or 3d graphics, and thus you end up needing a real device either way. Nokia gets this and thus they allow you to test your applications on real devices:

http://www.forum.nokia.com/Technolog...Device_Access/