I think the message is/was, Nokia wanted the N900 hacked to death because:

• its neat to to geeks and enthusiasts and potentially show some use cases that would make the N900 attractive to that demographic to buy it.
• This would make said demographic pick one up and potentially develop for the N900 or poke any holes/find & plug any possible holes/bugs in the OS and or create apps that are missing from the core system (i.e. fMMS, Conversations Plugins, etc...)

What they didn't obviously think was that important was to get developers on board to push out any type of consumer-grade apps (witness the sad state of the Ovi store). The message is pretty clear that the N900 more of an enthusiasts toy/tool rather than a polished mass-consumer device.

If that's the case, they need to embrace the fact that most users that bought the N900 knew what they were getting into, and release early & release often to patch/fix bugs and push out enhancements as needed.

Palm released their new OS and while their target was much more for the consumer masses, their OS is just as complex as maemo, and even maybe just as open (both Nokia & Palm have proprietary bits in their OS). They have someone actively listening AND responding on Twitter. Their hacker community is just as active & passionate about the OS. And they released quite a few fixes and enhancements in the last 11 months since the OS has been introduced. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebOS#Version_History

If we're going on the assumption that the N900 is a consumer device, Nokia is still failing compared to how Palm is handling the situation.