The thing is, most everyone knows that Nokia's Maemo (or Linux [UI+apps] for mobile devices in general) hasn't been "finished" or fully optimized quite yet, but that it's been understood to be work-in-progress and catching up with the fast maturing Linux desktop experience.

People trust that open process which brought us Debian/Ubuntu, Novell SUSE and Red Hat's Fedora. Features *will* arrive and drivers (and libraries and toolkits) *get* optimized. Each new release is an evolutionary improvement.

In Nokia's case there has been the expectation that as a much bigger entity (revenues, resource-wise) than the prominent Open Source companies put together, Nokia would commit enough resources to 1) take the mobile platform design forward, and also to 2) enable the small but growing developer and enthusiast community to maintain new software on the existing hardware.

From both the Open Source and also environmental (!) viewpoints 1-4 year old devices should certainly be capable and worthy of continued secure and even improved service.

If Nokia's objective is purely to maximize profit and minimize "obsoleted" platform support, maybe they should have picked Microsoft as their software sugardaddy or built their platform in-house along the lines of Apple/BSD. But if Nokia's objective is to help build an increasingly growing and self-sustainable open platform in which they can maintain a key role as an architect and benefactor/beneficiary, they'd need to learn when to stop hoarding the marbles or planning early obsoletion when it suits them.

Maybe the existing N7xx/N8xx generations are somewhat underpowered to deliver fancy Compiz/Clutter-style UI effects, but couldn't the basic 2D functionality (which we already have) still be taken forward and the building blocks fixed and improved? Is the perpetually improving Firefox engine (or user-friendly enhancements) tied to Nokia's Maemo 5/6 on technical grounds, or is it also just a problem with limited resources and prioritization? Doesn't the current ARM hardware have some built-in graphics acceleration features which remain unused due to closed/unported drivers?

It's not that I am a total ingrate and I do hail Nokia's contributions to the general Open Source development, esp. the work on overall improvements and fixes made to "behind-the-scenes" projects like GTK and QT. But perhaps due to corporate departmental and budgetary politics their actions are sometimes focused more towards short-term business bottom line as opposed to benefitting users and fostering community developers. It really is an eco-system where even the buyers-users and buyer-developers gyrate towards solutions that benefit them.

Maybe the hardware-centric and profit-margin oriented Nokia simply isn't the ideal "primus motor" to kickstart and popularize mobile Linux but it takes the "netbook" combination of distro community/company and a pure hardware manufacturer to build a sustainable non-closed platform? Time will tell, and people and companies sometimes learn from experience.