As far as I see it, the "rules" he is referring to are about the locked parts and requirements from the mobile industry. Ultimately the goal is create a platform and devices that ... that outside parties want to sell. Some of these features unfortunately cannot be open in terms of open source, at least currently.

I'm personally quite surprised over some of the comments to Ari's words. It's not an anti-open source statement, but it's more of a statement that there is learning required from both parties to make the open and non-open parts live together happily.