That is an interesting problem and one of the more important one in the end for the long term viability of an open platform... If users can't get to the hardware it's game over. Hopefully hardware manufacturer could get pressured by such big players as Nokia to release source, at least a year or two after its bleeding edge chips are out ... ?

But not compromising on that choice makes total sense, of course!
It's Nokia's business to make kick-*** phones

Considering how competitive the market seems to become... I'm wondering if, Nokia being at the center of the real platform direction / innovation, shouldn't right now completely aim for a 100% FOSS platform...
It would completely satisfy the FOSS world and, even if you do get a bunch of clones, it's going to make the market share grow, as a platform! Growth which ESSENTIAL right now against Apple's lead...

As you said, the hard part would be to try and balance this with the fact that you're competing with others on the same game! Since Nokia now owns Qt and could start taking a bigger role in other leadership roles it should be adapting quicker to new needs... It's hard of course to exactly point at what needs to be done as this is the million dollar question but i think that the first company to set foot in this kind of model will have a tremendous advantage.

I'm just throwing ideas here but when you see softwares like MySQL being able to sustain themselves while being GPL or Qt for that matter, I think there is something to be learned about the history of the PC openess or the TCP/IP history and how it has beaten the other architectures or network protocols.
I may be hoping for history to repeat itself...

Maybe a temporary license where we can see the source but not share it might make sense so you can still sue rip-offs and after a while completely free it? I don't know what might work but it's worth thinking about ...

As the platform is moving toward a portable PC-like experience, I think that selling proprietary software when it is the "bleeding edge idea of the year" might make some sense but anything else has to be considered commodity and moved to a community/leadership model. The proprietary possibility has to be left as to be able to create an app market for those who still think their great idea is worth 3.99$ and creating a real diversified market of license type.

Modest is probably too new and came out directly from Nokia and thus it will take time to build a community for an e-mail client used on what is right now a fringe platform... I think Nokia did a great job with the community and really is going in the right direction, it might just have to learn a few more things about how to deal with a community.

Software like Thunderbird came out of desktop environment groups whose goal are to build a complete desktop.
It's going to be hard (though Qt will help) to standardize a new desktop environment to build a community like KDE or Gnome, but if successful it would be an incredible success and advantage over competitors for Nokia!

Hopefully, as the smart phone is really in its infancy, we will see this community grow very quickly in the coming years and I hope Nokia can get as big a part of the pie as possible... But now is not the time to try to cash in too early! Though, time is running out...

I'm wondering why is everyone moving toward a FOSS solutions... The browser has become a commodity and there is not much you can do to innovate except for speed and usability (GUI?) without going through standard bodies, and that's a great thing, otherwise we wouldn't have the web!

As you said real innovation in the FOSS vs FOSS is hard and require great ideas and i think having your hands deep in some key communities!

I'm wondering, is the new browser front-end (GUI) in Maemo not FOSS ? (I know the back-end now is, and that's great!)
But, If not Why not?
How is that different than the media player which is even more of a commodity to me?

I'm guessing this is a question of market segment... and marketing, which Apple has always been good at, and people sucker for it...!

But it's true, most people don't care about their freedom!?

But we're moving toward a more complex world of information and the bet is now on whether more powerful device are going to be useful or not... And i think that for the market which will require the best adaptable devices the FOSS model will be an important key to success.

But yes, very specific dumped down solutions for different markets will probably always succeed. So, meanwhile, of course selling simple phones over and over again is going to generate a bigger margin of profit than trying to push the envelop like the NXX0 serie is... And while people looking for simple solutions are easy to please, those with complex problems will require more than a glowing fruit or soap bar. But of course, marketing does miracles that are actually horrible technically...

I wonder if we will get to a point where the software platform for cell phone will be moving toward a common base and/or formats without the type of lock-in that we see right now from Apple or Microsoft and all...
These type of barriers and vendor lock-in these days are really a barrier to global full scale cooperation and huge social networks unthinkable today, that and the carriers...
What if the 2 billions cell phone on earth could exchange more than SMS as their most complex common language?
This won't happen in any interesting way without open standards and FOSS...
Though Nokia got that by trying to sell phones directly, bypassing the carriers responsibility on the lock-in situations. I'm just hoping it's not to take their place!

Just playing devil's advocate here, but maybe the whole model of trying to be #1 is becoming outdated in the context of music and it's going back to what it was 60 years ago when we had 100 time more choice in music and diversity of labels now that people can access any music from anywhere and not get forced into the big label pop crap...
Same goes for every phone on the market where the diversity of solution right now is still limited by technology and Nokia's tradition of trying to hit every single niche market is a good idea in that respect! Though in the near future we'll see devices capable of a lot more and thus an open platform is the only way forward to bigger social networks and thus markets.

The whole model is on the verge of a big change.

With all this said, I can understand how hard this is going to be and doing it progressively through Modest and other test is a good idea! Keep going :-)

Go Nokia Go !!! ;-)