an Open Source Hardware Certification

I doubt anything is going to change for the better as a result of this effort. They're already showing a willingness to compromise on users freedom from the sounds of it. It's based on a foundation that misses the point ("open source"). We're already seeing companies like Intel, Atheros, and others taking steps backwards.

It's time to start designing hardware from "scratch" to whatever extent that's possible and figuring out how we can cut corners to bring down the manufacturing costs (not necessarily worse computers- just lower costs- as you can't manufacture 200,000 of something for a user base of 5,000).

Once you've achieved that design then work needs to be done to promote the effort and raise funds for actual manufacturing. Even $250,000 is a lot of money particularly when you don't have numbers to build off. That is if you know you can sell 250 of a given computer then it's easy to formulate a plan to manufacture 250 computers. But when you've been selling x86 systems of three different classes and the most popular class only has 120 computers and contains a 1920x1080 screen, etc. then all of a sudden it's not so clear that the cheaper lower end system you're able to design would have enough demand to meet the 250 you'll need to manufacture. A wrong move here and there goes the business. It's one thing for a business to seed the development, but it's another to take that risk, if the effort fails.

So the first thing that would need to happen is that risk needs to be spread out. That could be done through a well-marketed campaign, but still, you need to hit that 250 number. Otherwise it will fail no matter what.

Unfortunately I have no idea for a solution on some issues. Like wifi. All next-gen wifi chipsets are dependent on proprietary software and a good chunk of the systems on the market now lock users into these chips so you can't swap them for ones that are free software friendly.

You can for the moment skip the wifi as its not designed into the SOC, but what happens when it is? Then it becomes even more difficult. In theory you could just not utilise it maybe. An internal USB port and an older wifi chip might work. However you can't get older wifi chips manufactured due to quantities required and significant increases in manufacturing costs. Do you want to pay $250 for a wifi chip? That's assuming you have demand at $250 a chip for at least 100,000 chips a year, maybe more.