On the other hand, I haven't seen Debian or Ubuntu shipping many devices that run their distributions. Devices whose hardware specifications can be determined by competitors based on the software under development in the open.

As it stands, Maemo development is less open than that of other Linux distributions, but more open than that of the operating software in many other handheld devices. Nokia is a large corporation that has been traveling the standard, closed development path for a long time. They're shifting now, but simple inertia means the change can't be completed overnight. At this point though, the course change appears to have taken on an inertia of its own, and that's encouraging.