A fair fraction on would-be N900 users (particularly, I suspect, the ones posting here) have a background in and experience of the free software way of dong things and were attracted to Maemo because we were told that it was our kind of OS.

Mostly, I think that it is, but this sort of secrecy is not how we are used to things being done. You can be open about bugs and tests and fixes and delays without the sky falling in - we know that because that's how we do it, all the time.