They have no real influence, when it comes down to it. It's all about the SoC manufacturer, and they're selling to way more than just Nokia. Having open source drivers isn't a huge selling point from core designer to SoC designer, so they revert to their default "unprofitable trade secret" stance.

Hell you'd think Intel could pull some strings, but I suspect that the people who negotiated for it didn't see it as a valuable point either (that or Imagination fiercely protects their driver source, which is likely.)

Core bits of Maemo being closed is never excusable since Nokia has always had control over it. I suspect it's the Marketers and Legal people behind the scenes screwing things up. You know, "brand protection" ****.

This is also why I'm only interested in the community release of MeeGo and not whatever things Nokia is whipping up, since that will eventually have the same issues as Maemo is having now.

I'd love to have a 100% open source stack, but the industry still sees platforms like this as something special and different from the standard PC, so we get crap like Flash requiring the hardware vendor to purchase a license (I suspect it's the same for Skype.)