> He wasn't interested in direct development of AROS and after examining the state
> of the OS he didn't consider it polisedh or stable enough for inclusion with his PCs.

I was alluding to the time the Wikipedia quote refers to, i.e. when he still *was* considering AROS and was subsequently pressured to scrap this idea, but by another entity and for entirely different reasons than are claimed in the Wikipedia article. From Commodore USA's August 31st 2010 press release:

"Commodore USA has now taken a major role in not just supporting the future Amiga market with our many new products, but also in providing a new beginning for the enormous existing Amiga community. Our relationship with them, along with our support for the elegant, robust and lightweight AROS desktop operating system, will ensure that they and future customers will benefit from our new and exciting vision, and enable the legacy Commodore and Amiga culture to flourish. [...] In response to an overwhelming demand from Amiga users worldwide, Commodore USA’s CTO Leo Nigro announced today that their new Amiga branded computers will be fully AROS compatible, and that they will be supporting the AROS open source community in every way possible. Mr. Nigro states 'With the monumental strides that AROS has recently achieved, we realize the importance of accelerating this progress with funding that will enable this project to rapidly move forward and take it’s rightful place at the forefront of desktop operating systems'."
http://www.commodoreusa.net/CUSA_News.aspx

The Wikipedia article now claims that it was Amiga Inc. who after publication of this press release prohibited Commodore USA to ship AROS with its new 'Amiga' line of computers, and it claims further that the reason for Amiga Inc. doing this was the open source nature of AROS. Problem is that's not what happened at all, and besides it doesn't make any sense (taking into account that they now go for altered Ubuntu, which is open source as well). The one who put this into the Wikipedia article is either purposely and falsely putting the blame on Amiga Inc. or he really thinks that's what happened and is pulling this out of his arse. It's getting way beyond funny when he cites a posting of yours as source for his claims when this posting doesn't support any of those bizarre claims.
It's well known that what's potentially prohibiting Commodore USA to ship AROS with its new 'Amiga' line of computers is the "Substantially Similar Software Architecture" clause in the September 2009 settlement agreement between Hyperion and Amiga Inc., and it's certainly Hyperion, *not* Amiga Inc., who would have attempted to enforce this clause should Commodore USA have decided to go for AROS (see in my previous posting the link to Hyperionmp's telling reaction to the above quoted press release on amigaworld.net).
One could argue that not Commodore USA but Amiga Inc. would have got sued by Hyperion over this as Hyperion's agreement is not with Commodore USA but with Amiga Inc., and that consequently it was not Hyperion but Amiga Inc. who in order to avoid litigation prohibited Commodore USA to ship 'Amiga' computers with AROS, but that still doesn't render the claims regarding the alleged reason any less bogus.

> the MorphOS developers had apparently rejected an X86 port (for at least
> the immediately future).

Yes, and Commodore USA 'Amiga' computers with MorphOS would have caused the same outrage in Hyperion that the Commodore USA's original AROS announcement did. At least I wouldn't know how MorphOS could be less subject to the "Substantially Similar Software Architecture" clause than AROS.

> it doesn't seem fair that other small shops can sell AROS based systems
> and not get any negative press but when C=USA wants to bundle an
> open source OS with their machines they get flack for it.

I'm not getting what you're trying to say here. The AresOne and the iMica are systems without the 'Amiga' name that come with a native AmigaOS-like OS, whereas the Commodore USA 'Amiga' line will be systems *with* the 'Amiga' name that come *without* a native AmigaOS-like OS. So these are exactly contrastive situations that cannot be easily compared. Furthermore, the open source matter has nothing at all to do with anything here.