...it is yet to be answered (or maybe even tried) what are the actual benefits of close community involvement in product/service creation. ..I think no-one has tried it yet, in large scale at least.
Free and open source software promotes the development of the Internet as a public resource. Transparent community-based processes promote participation, accountability, and trust.
Open Governance to ensure engagement in our leadership and decision processes; Free Software to ensure the result of our work is available to all people; Inclusivity to ensure that people of all origins are welcome to join us and participate;
Our goal with the Sailfish OS is to develop an open source operating system in co-operation with the community, thus ensuring the development of a best-of-breed operating system. We believe this will act as a refreshing sea-wind that will help push the industry forward. A key tool for the achievement of this goal is ensuring that the operating system will be licensed under an open source licensing model that encourages and facilitates community participation. As we have built Sailfish on top of existing open source projects such as Mer, we also want to make sure that the community will benefit from the work we have done.