First lcuk, then YoDude: lcuk, one of the things that I'm proud to have been a part of as a member of the past two councils was helping Stskeeps get a job with maemo.org (as "distmaster") to do the very thing you're saying needs to be done. He is pushing a queue of closed components through the "request for opening" process for us now. Honestly, most of the stuff that they want to open is beyond my depth, but I just know that more open is better, because it seems to me that many times when Nokia opens something, some genius hacker steps in and does magical things with it. This was a big deal to me during my two terms. I hope at least one person on the next council sets this as a priority. Another thing that I greatly desired to accomplish (and mostly failed to do) during my terms on Council was to make the "engaged users" segment of this community a more important part of the community's "core". It always frustrated me that the decision makers often chose to marginalise the forum users because they were too many, too unruly, too... unmanagable. By doing the important business on the mailing lists and IRC instead of the forums, it kept the noise down, but at the expense of losing a huge pool of resources. I signed up for the community mailing list in order to nominate myself last spring. I subsequently signed up to the developer list in order to be able to watch the traffic there as part of my job as council member. It is probably worth the while of anyone who would like to participate in the decision-making processes of maemo.org (while it lasts) to subscribe to the mailing lists, too. And yes, YoDude, I think you should head on over and nominate yourself. I'll vote for you if you stand as a rep for "engaged users" and you promise to pick up the torch of keeping the forums under the gaze of the decision makers in this community and the one that is forming over at meego.com.
...for having a relative newcomer or two on the council as a way of drawing new people into the thick of things