Wow, I'm impressed. Suddenly the vote count shot up near 6200. Guess I'm not the only lurker.
I do find it a bit strange on HTC's part (considering they should have been informed enough to know full well there would be a substantial backlash), that they take such a "calculated risk" in locking down the bootloader. If this is just one big marketing campaign as has been suggested above, it's also very risky -- especially since their "response" so far has been pure commitment-free appeasement. It is fairly clear that by responding in this way at this stage, they think they're merely appeasing the "nerd rabble" long enough to stall until release while generating some nice PR -- and stopping our votes.
Think about it. Rather than some clever new bait-and-switch sensationalist marketing (pun intended), it seems they genuinely decided nobody would care that much -- and now that there has been a moderate outcry ["moderate" at the time of their response], they're still holding out hope in appeasement while trying to mince words and placate the crowd until they can release the devices, at which point the lack of fierce negativity among enthusiasts (or even pseudo-geeks, a large Android community) in the interim would no longer factor into the consumer consciousness. In this way, HTC would win the bootloader battle without a fight and wouldn't lose too many sales (or so they believe).
Furthermore, if and once the outcome of their "revised decision" is to keep the devices hopelessly locked, it will certainly be too late for any change to be elicited regarding their bootloader policy pre-release, and they'd "win" the battle by default. The moral of the story? Do not let up; spread the word. I still can't believe this power of ours, the power of the community, but it's real. Motorola got nearly 10k signatures on this very petition site, and shortly thereafter they announced they'd let up as much they could on their bootloader locks, despite their legacy as one of the most locked-down handset producers this side of Apple.
But while impressive, we're far from done. Spread the word -- our choices today, our words and actions, may indeed have a direct bearing on the openness of handsets for years to come! Even if you're not a fan of the Evo 3D, the Sensation, or even HTC -- your vote may nonetheless play a crucial role in determining the functionality of a
competing device you might buy down the line.