So I don't think there's a legitimate argument regarding the quality of electronics components originating in China...
Did I miss something?
When I mentioned that I support the idea of local production (for me thats europe) of the arduino, I was not questioning the quality of the components, but was concerned about the working conditions.
I far as I know PCB are still made with some agressive chemicals put on copper, which will end up as toxic waste to be handled with gloves at least. The Yangtse-river is already dead and if you want to spoil your day go to www.amnesty.org and search for "china working conditions".
I don't want to discuss this any further as it is irrelevant to the topic.
Any american or european would be perfectly able to to produce an Arduino-board which is not working!
I could do it, trust me 
I simply don't understand why these people should be allowed to ride the ArdunioWave by using the trademark?
If you think the board needs some competion in any way, just go ahead and make one. This is not as Daniel said the flux capacitor. Call the whole thing TPFKAA (TheProjectFormerlyKnownAsArduino) and good luck.
I still don't know what the world is missing when the Arduino team is not putting out the production files.
Anybody thought about requesting open sourcing the financial issues of the project?
Where are the calcualtions and the manufacturer contact lists for the components on the board, I thought this was open source???
(Got carried away here I think...)
Eberhard: you shouldn't expect much as consumer, as it's not a consumer product. It's an open-source hardware project. Maybe that's the essence of the problem: people are confusing it for a product, with brand name and all.
No, I am a customer when it comes to the Arduino hardware. I paid money for the board, so expect it to be working otherwise, I will return it.
The (open source minded) manufacturer of the board has also put in his investment and needs to sell the board to me.
This is clearly a producer/customer relationship.
It is totally different from open source software I use. When some part of the software is not up to my requirements I can (hopefully) fix that myself with an editor and a compiler.
This would not be the case if a trace on a Arduino PCB somehow ended up in the wrong place and stopped the whole thing from working.
Eberhard