It's the ONLY part of open-source that makes open-source, OPEN-SOURCE. You could close everything ELSE (closed philosophy, closed etc) and as long as you provide OPEN SOURCE to the code, you've actually provided the most PRESCIENT and, in fact, about the ONLY part of openness that counts.

It may not be a black and white world, but when you use terms like "open" and "closed", there's a very binary definition of how you're delivering your source code. If you take the most important little bits that talk to the device and close them, you've got CLOSED bits of code. Not "kinda open" ...they're closed. And I, again, have to argue that puffery regarding Nokia's Maemo's contributions to openness is just that, puffery. It's certainly not helping the community to fix their own problems and dismissing the problem with claims of being "open enough" is cold comfort to the community that wants to develop on the hardware that is no longer being maintained by Nokia. How long do you think the N900 will remain a current platform. Hell, is it even a current platform anymore now?

Mark my words, N900 owners. Let's see how satisfied you'll be when the next device comes out and you can't even get any more bugfixes for the OS you're stuck with, just like all the previous Nokia tablet owners. It's bad enough that the hardware support is awful--Nokia's current level of support for parts and repair should be criminal.