I'd rather pose them now, and be proactive instead of waiting for a year after which all effort may be a bit late. Because the battle is ongoing now, and we just can't sit behind knowing Maemo is a superior platform, but getting no adoption because of .... what ?

About the openness, Android is as open as Maemo, even more. Anyone with a bit of Java knowledge (low barrier to entry) can strike up an app and push it to the market place.
Even the iPhone will be getting liberated a bit Adobe will release the Flash for iPhone: tons of web developers with minimal skill will be able to hack up applications and distribute them to a incredible user base: 32 milion iPhone customers, of which a majority will gladly install every piece of software they can get their hands on.

I'm afraid we'll see Maemo relegated to the status of a niche platform, unless:
- There is a simple enough SDK. Ovi SDK seems like a step in a good direction, I'd militate for advanced Javascript/Actionscript support in the browser, or possible porting Adobe AIR to this device.
- The devices are user-friendly and reliable in operation. Joe Average will not use this platform if it takes more than 4 clicks to do anything interesting.
- Develop a killer application for this platform which is not present elsewhere - we should brainstorm on this; I'd personally start supporting liqbase as a tool for presentations: run it on video out, allow to nice interactions based on screen with live addnotations, make it default tool for a presentation in the corporate world instead of laptop + powerpoint.
- Make it easy to run application developed for other devices on this one. This is a tough one, but running J2ME and Android apps on the Maemo 5 and above out of box would be incredible.

We should not battle the iPhone on the image, and Android on portability, we should battle on openness, ease of use, and versatility.