I like Linux and open source a lot.
I like the philosophies and how it got started and grew.

What I don't like, and this is rather topical today, is what happens when a corporation develops and promotes an open sourced platform.

As with Maemo, we have an open sourced platform that runs on a certain company's devices. It creates an active community around it and benefits from countless hours of volunteer developments that in turn attracts more users to the devices.

Open sourced. Community. Full disclosure. Hug a tree.
All is good..

But, since this open sourced platform runs exclusively on devices from a publicly traded company there can never be true, full disclosure of events pertaining to these devices OR the operating system that runs on them.

This creates a pseudo-open-community where the actual users/participants are very vested into the ideology behind open sourced and, as in the case with Maemo, are amongst themselves (and to any iPhone fanboy) always ready to declare how incredible this is and that open sourcing is amazing and how locked in and fooled any Droid, iPhone, etc users are - but all of this without actually knowing or being able to influence their own future.

One day the corporation decides to change the roadmap and either go with another operating system or cancel the plans for the actual devices. Suddenly, big surprise. Why didn't we know? That's it.

Had it been a 'regular' (in lack of better word) distro of Linux development would just continue and be used on millions of other laptops, desktops and servers out there.

Open sourced platforms that are dedicated to run on niche devices produced exclusively by one (or a few) publicly traded companies can not, should not be considered 'open'. They are owned and run by the company that allows the users to, for the time, develop on it. That source code for applications are made available makes it technically open sourced but in the end everyone is as locked in and ruled by, in this case Nokia, as any iPhone owner is by Apple.