Isn' t that the route that Blackberry has taken with their tablet device recently? Some people in the industry are betting that this move is going to cheapen the Blackberry platform and just gives Android that much more credence and only provides better value for Android platform devices. It'll be a lot like the old days of owning a computer running MS/DOS versus DR/DOS or any one of the other DOS clones. You could use them--but everybody kept writing their software specifically against MS/DOS and they weren't very well guaranteed to run well anywhere else. That only bolstered confidence in purchasing something with MS/DOS and made everything else at least one notch less than ideal for running your games or applications. If Blackberry (or, in your case, Nokia) runs Android apps under a different OS and people get a taste of it, and like it more or less despite the glitches of running on something other than Android, they'll be far more certain that they'll want an actual Android device next time.

Despite the fact that I own and genuinely enjoy my Android experience, I'd rather like to see Blackberry and Nokia COMPETE and see if they can outshine in SOME kinds of innovations instead of just giving in and becoming yet another "ME TOO" platform. (ala Nokia's throwing in the towel on what they COULD have been ahead and cornered the market on today (Internet Tablets), instead they decided to slop together yet another "ME TOO" smart phone to compete with iPhone and Android... a market they were clearly NOT ahead of. Idiots.)

I'm quite sure there are at least several Android phones and tablets that can do exactly that (in fact, the $250 (now $200) Nook Color I hacked for my mom does that). Durrr. But that's beside the fact--as someone else put it, if you can have a stable and supported environment, that's worth a lot more than a sloppy, unsupported one.

I also dispute your figure of 99% open-source. Where did you get that figure from? I REALLY want to know. Did they open-source the calendar? The media player? What about the power system? Drivers? Seriously--where did you get that number? Last time someone compiled figures on openness in another thread on this very same forum, it looked like far less of Maemo was open-source than Android's OS. In VERY respect Android has far, far fewer OS-crippling dependencies on closed-source too (that is, you CAN replace closed-source with open-source in Android all over the place, but Maemo becomes broken when you try).

For that matter, if they wanted to keep more Maemo developers, why are they looking internally inside Nokia anyway? Why not open-source the goddam thing already? Right?

It's not the first time they've done that: http://www.nokia.co.uk/find-products...andn900_228x96

Except that the Maemo isn't open-source, it's open-core (it's not even open-development, as evidenced by all the portions that only Nokia can patch or fix as you can see from all the FIXED IN _NEXT OS_ and WONTFIXES, and so on, that the community hasn't even been allowed to see code for much less have access to the repositories to fix themselves FOR Nokia). MeeGo will hopefully end up being a different story but I can't help this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach after living out the last several years with a Nokia device and watching how they've treated us so far all while beating their chest about openness and giving back to the community.

Given Nokia's abysmal communication in the past, would it surprise you if they said some marketing-worthy drivel along the lines of, "STEP 5 of 5! THIS IS IT! Maemo is finally PERFECT! Buy them before they disappear!" Which is, of course, code for "end of line" and "last batch, buy 'em but you're on your own from now on... don't bother us about support."

Mark my words and watch. I've made predictions on here before that nobody wanted to take seriously and they've usually ended up panning out like that. :P

Of course, you also won't be able to buy replacement parts, you'll need to ship your hardware in a box to who-knows-where all over God's creation so that you can be without your device for weeks to possibly months until it comes back... maybe repaired, maybe not, maybe replaced. No thanks. I don't trust Nokia any further anymore. I trust Nokia no more than I can talk face to face, in person with one of their employees or even a Nokia representative--which, so far even with traveling all over the US for years, has been never. I learned my lesson. Thanks, Nokia.