Okay, I did not once anywhere use the word "evil." Please don't put words in my mouth. Nor did I say that Nokia or any other corporation are doing things that are bad for people.

What I said is that a business like Nokia is concerned with one thing, making money. They only see people as potential consumers of their products. That can have good effects, neutral effects, and bad effects. But a business like Nokia or Apple doesn't make choices based on what these effects are (unless they think it will make them money).

A company like Nokia "donates" a cell tower because either 1) they are trying to create a market for their products in a specific locality, either presently or for some time in the future 2) the apparent gesture of good will serves a PR purpose for them, so it's part of their general marketing strategy 3) the "donation" gives them some sort of tax brake 4) the "donation" curries favor with a government or municipality where the corporation is trying to gain other advantages. All of these things can variously be going on at once as well.

So it remains naive to think that "donating" a cell tower did not serve some other business purpose or long term strategy on Nokia's part. If it does some good along the way fine, maybe that warms the hearts of a few people at Nokia. But if it didn't serve some long (or short) term business purpose, no matter how much good it did, Nokia would not have "donated" anything.

I don't know what business you work for, so it's hard for me to comment on it. But even without getting publicity for their actions, it doesn't mean that behind the scenes important parties (political or business) don't know what's going on and it won't serve a purpose in the future. It doesn't mean that word of mouth publicity isn't valuable, even if explicit advertising isn't involved. And sometimes it's as simple as having people more used to using cell phones or a particular technology/product, more used to and accepting of the purposes they can serve, and that grows the industry for any company connected to the business and benefits those businesses anyway in the long run, whether or not people realize exactly who did what.

In the end it comes down to how does a business find ways to make more people accept and want it's products or the type of product it sells? How do you grow the market, either for your specific brand or simply for the general segement that your business operates in? There are many subtle, but effective ways to strategize. But nobody gives away 10% of their quarter quota without an angle. If it does some good, that's great. But doing good is a means to another end and would not be undertaken for it's own sake.

Why can't we give them all those things with Maemo? We are in a much better position than 10-15 years ago, every industry player is more concerned in protocol/format compatibility. All the most popular Web sites have APIs anyone can use. Let's use them to make compelling compatible solutions for our platform of choice.