I think it's more to do with the fact that the N900 has an OPEN operating system rather than Android where the OS is actually closed (most of it anyway!).

The thing is that ANYTHING you want to on the N900 is pretty easy to do (apart from the really complex stuff like Video calling, portrait mode etc. etc.) from the command line.

So ultimately it's stupidly easy for a developer to write a script for the N900 to do something, and then some other developer will turn it into a .deb and upload it to extras-devel and we can have a turn around of 7 days or less!!!!!!! Imagine that - asking for an feature and having it delivered within 7 days! Thats ****ing awesome