Yeah... the MPP is pretty awesome... but it is near useless if they don't provide "usable" hashpower for a nominal fee.
Raw chips without a PCB is pretty tough pill to swallow. And if they decide to charge 10BTC per populated PCB in March, there is nothing in their terms to stop that. They promised that there would be an independent DIY community at the time, but no technical specifications of the chip has been released which would be a pre-requisite.
Hopefully there will be some clarity provided around this soon for customers (I am one btw)... not that is matters as they are sold out. But yes... the MPP is the most attractive/innovative part of HF's offer.
Clarity would be a good thing but there are a couple of positives:
1) HF publicly showed the # of units sold and honestly it is a relatively low number (~0.25 PH/s direct sales, ~0.5 PH/s including IceDrill)
2) If nobody else IceDrill will have the knowledge and experience making boards as they are buying only chips.
So while HF "could" screw over their customers charging a high premium for boards and assembly most of their potential profit comes from future sales and burning the early customers is a good way to ensure there are none. Also given at least one outside entity has the specs and ability to produce boards it is kinda hard to close the door now. That being said it would be an encouraging sign if HF provides some specs for the boards as well as a guestimate on what they would charge to convert chips to complete boards or rigs. Boards might be more useful as cases, power supplies, waterblocks, and other gear can be obtained off the shelf. I also assume the controller used in the babyjet can be connected to more than one hashing board. So the critical number is what is the cost for an assembled & tested board.