I think the see through what they are working on would be community wise perfect (but also makes it possible for others to steal ideas), but if you have control on the code base it would probably be more about knowledge than about ownery eg. if you know how your system works, you can develop it fast and be step ahead... google stays step ahead with andorid doing all the development in house, don't know if there is other trics to keep android in google than that (app store offcourse)... but they certainly seem to own android in practice.

Also I think that was what happened with mysql, to my knowledge oracle hasn't been able to develop it, since they didn't buy the people who where developing the code. So now the mysql guys have mariaDB, which is compatible with mysql, but better...

also if community feels as it is part of the development, it's like biting your own leg when running the mouth. This has been probably said in different forms already, but what the hey jolla was such a cool news

Jolla is a jollyboat in english.

edit.

Also the core from mer sound to me like the possible device could probably be modded to anything, since the core is open (though I don't really understand what is open and closed in N9, it seem pretty open too after all). But there def is a demand for open linux devices, like raspberry pi, it sold out in minutes and how cool that little board really is!