I very seriously doubt that any enterprising individuals were/are the least bit dissuaded by another FPGA entering the market. If anything, it would have spurned them to figure out how exactly it's done and copy the design... it would not put anyone off from developing their own product, that is just ridiculous.
As one of those enterprising individuals, I'd like to speak up here. BFL's bait-and-switch certainly did hurt us. The only reason we got anything made was because we decided to go with our gut and ignore the threat of that mythological device actually becoming a reality. We pulled that trigger back in October, well before your test in mid-December showing that they had completely missed the mark. Making the decision to pour tens of thousands of dollars into a production run that could very well go unsold, or need to be sold under cost to recoup some of the investment, was not an easy one. The weeks before your test were very stressful, believe me.
So yeah, they didn't dissuade us, but any rational person really should have been. At the very least, delaying the order until more information was available. Fortunately, the laws of physics held and they didn't reach the power efficiency that is impossible with 65 nm FPGAs (although the fact that they used 65 nm FPGAs was not even clear back then). They did dissuade us in a way though--if BFL had provided honest specs from the beginning, we certainly would have gone ahead with a larger order and been able to reduce the cost.
Fortunately, our product is better. No, we're not planning to copy their design. They used old FPGAs, and get a fraction of the power efficiency. Why would we want to copy that?
For reference, O_Shovah measured 15.64 W at 360 MH/s or 23 MH/J for the X6500 (
see this post). I've measured about 18 W at 400 MH/s.