I want to point out that I have seen two cases in Maemo where free (as in freedom, not free as in beer) has been all WIN when closed would have been fail.

One of the two cases is the piece of software you're using, the Google Voice app, DialCentral. It was started by a lone coder who got bored and abandoned the project, but it was picked up by two other coders and carried on until today. Only one of them is left, epage, but he wasn't the one to start it...

Another classic example is the Webkit engine for the default browser. The original dev disappeared, but because he had dumped his code in Garage, a new developer was able to pick up where he left off. Well, not exactly where he left off, the original guy made some changes and then never added them to his Garage project so the new developer had to rewrite a bunch of stuff before he could continue on...

See, free (as in freedom, not as in beer) has one big advantage: if it is really a useful, desirable piece of software, someone new can pick up where the last guy stopped. Once a developer of closed software abandons his app, that's it, the app is dead.

When the Maemo community gets bigger, the win in free is going to become clearer and clearer.