The core question with the Kindle Fire is whether you can install apps from places other than the Amazon Store. This has important ramifications for security, among other things, since the Android Market moves updates instantly, versus the Amazon Store, which has humans in the loop.

If I was an Android developer, I'd be looking at the Fire and asking whether it was worth supporting, when Google is (presumably) going to be pushing hard to get everybody onto Ice Cream Sandwich, while Amazon is dragging behind with their proprietary Android fork.

Another issue that's only ever going to matter to the Slashdot crowd is that the new web browser, Silk, has the property that Amazon is your web proxy server and there's no way around it. Any web site you visit, whether SSL or not, will have its content visible to Amazon.