I also have the feeling that the same thing would happen if Intel decided to open up the details on their Atom SoC platforms. They're a bit like a neutered PC from what I understand, so it's a lot easier to port existing OSs to them, but without technical docs it's still hard.
What technical details are missing? I was under the impression that Intel has the most open SoCs around. The only thing I can think of is the PowerVR GPUs in some of their older chips, but those aren't theirs to open, and they stopped using them in recent SoCs in favor of their own GPUs.