Thanks again smeg, your thoughtful input has been a huge help for getting me thinking straight.

I think the biggest factor affecting things now is the significant change to the nature of the product. When it was an internate tablet, there was this cool geek thing going that had people truly hacking up solutions, like the work of folks like penguinbait and jolouis. Now the N900 is a phone, with a more refined and almost "don't hack me" aura, that it's got the old community here anxious. Newcomers have different wants and needs for the most part-- they just want built-in features refined or missing ones added by Nokia.

The legacy community needs to redefine its purpose...