I posted about creating a linux build in another forum, and joe ford replied that they have no idea as of yet to go linux, nor open source. I've looked at the castle link hardware, it uses some pretty nifty tricks to establish a connection. I would bank on a programming card not unlike the ones available now for the ezrun etc ESCs. The only issue would be curve manipulation since a a graphics display is required for this, and that makes everything 5 times more complicated. So maybe having the same parameters available for stick programming, but allowing for greater flexibility by having smaller increments for values.
We don't need a handheld programmer. All we need is for Castlelink to work on the iphone...
lol. That would be cool, but how many people have iPhones (I don't). A little handheld programmer just makes changing all those nice settings so much easier.