From the end result point of view there's not much difference in what's at the bottom. I believe a Fedora/RPM-based baseline could be on the same level as a Debian/DEB-based baseline. However, for some of us who view the whole thing from the bottom-up, i.e. working directly with package creation etc. it can make a big difference. In particular, some of us went with the internet tablet (and later N900) _because_ it was a Debian/DEB-based solution.

So I'll be keeping an eye on this thread started by titan. The proposed solution could presumably be done without creating a hopeless divide.