It's unfortunate that they're taking a closed source model when others like System76 and Librem are using their hardware sales to fund open source development.
There's also webOS, which was originally funded by Palm and doesn't seem to have any open source development any longer, and the Maui project which is basically one guy trying to make his own Linux UI.
I'd love to see a team with decent UX sensibilities tackle a touch-first Linux UI. Nothing I've seen so far has impressed me. Seems like there are a lot of onesie-and-twosie sized projects that take forever to ship anything and never hit critical mass; meanwhile, nothing really holds a candle to the design of Android/iOS.