I know this is an old one and we'll never see people agree on this, but:

If you are one of those "as long as it works I dont mind if it's closed source"-people, I honestly recommend you buy Windows-based products or look for what Apple has to offer. This is not meant to be impolite, it's a matter of fact: My experience is that the "just works"-factor is higher on these platforms than it ever will be on (semi-)open ones like Maemo.

The appeal of open platforms is that you do not depend on the good will or business plan of one single company when it comes to updates, bug fixes, backports etc.

You as a consumer decide what's more important; you should know, though, that you can't have both. (As seen with the abandonned 770 now.)

The problem with ITOS200x (770/N800) is that, the way it is now, it offers the worst of both worlds: It heavily depends on Nokia, there's now way to develop it without access to their closed source components. At the same time it's open enough so users experience all the problems that are common with open platforms.

There are 2 ways to go from here: Make it really open or continue as a totally closed source device that "just works". The second option might seem appealing to consumers at first, but don't forget there are quite a lot of devices out there that are just that way. You can go and buy one today. The charming idea about the 770 (when it was originally released) was the (false) idea of an open, thus future-proof device, and I still believe that this would be the right way to go. This is why I'm not so happy with Nokia's obvious plan of packing more and more proprietary components into the OS. Skype is part of this.