Is there a specific way a developer has to integrate this into their app? Or is it up to them? Sounds pretty cool, though, for people that like to share their favorite apps anyway.
Built-in WiFi was definitely on our feature-list, but you hit the nail on the head there - cost and FCC compliance were big issues. We decided to keep it simple and add it in via off-board solutions.
The OS is based on the Yocto Project, so it's a distro we're putting together ourselves. It's still under heavy development, but the goal is to have something minimal that we can throw all our support under without having to rely as much on other distros that already have tons of other boards/projects to worry about.
We haven't committed to open-sourcing the hardware yet, but all the software will be FOSS. The stuff we have so far is on github, and feedback would be great.