That is really a highly important and decisively relevant argument. IoT edition was introduced to cover an emerging use case in the wake of growing Internet ubiquity – at least if I remember the discussion correctly.
This consideration still seems valid and sensible to me.
And the not particularly consistent documentation is no argument. At least there is documentation. Cloud is an edition and has no documentation at all.
One solution would certainly be to specify the relevant hardware more precisely. One suggestion is to limit ourselves to Raspberry. Another popularity contest! Can’t we come up with something better? We are choosing hardware that is right at the top of the ”bad guys” list when it comes to support Open Source Software.
Perhaps we should explicitly include hardware from OSS-friendly manufacturers such as pine64, LibreComputer, and Radxa, just as examples. Their hardware is usually cheaper and more powerful than Raspberry Pi 4. And for IoT (and Server or CoreOS), the problems with graphics chips are irrelevant.
Perhaps the criteria and the rough list here could be a starting point. And hopefully the testing could be divided between the three editions.
And I am happy to consolidate the documentation if I have 1 or 2 members of the SIG who would be willing to review it (and answer any questions).