Go to http://wiki.maemo.org/Mer, if you don't know Mer, I think it maybe what you are searching for.

Allow me to play devil's advocate for a moment here... and ask one simple question.

What's the draw of 100% opensource software? Why is it important? What project from 100% free (FOSS) software - Linux and Mozilla withstanding - that's really worth the fuss?

This thread discusses some of those ideas and has a cool diagram to help provide insight.
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=30698

Read that. Was looking for more opinion.

Thanks though. Very good article indeed.

At a fundamental level, it's the "standing on the shoulders of giants" concept - to quote wikipedia: It's what humanity did ever since we could pass along information and ideas, at least until artificial restrictions like intellectual property came along.

On a more practical level, open means that bugs can be fixed and features added by anyone. Even if you don't have the time and skills to do it, someone else probably will. Closer to home, search bugs.maemo.org for keyword "patch" and realize that only open components can be fixed by the community.

Some high-profile projects that have really changed things include asterisk, apache, mysql, openoffice, high-level languages like perl, python & ruby, and even full blown desktop environments like GNOME and KDE.

But it's not even about complete projects, think "building blocks" instead - projects like the linux kernel, gcc, openssl, busybox and/or the various GNU *utils, X11, GTK+/QT, libjpeg, libpng, openssl, gstreamer and so on. The more closed components you have in the stack the harder it is to fix things and the greater the chances that the project will eventually disappear into obscurity.

fyi there is http://wiki.maemo.org/Why_the_closed_packages and also http://wiki.maemo.org/Task:Components_and_packages that address some of the questions made in this thread.

So what are the other 10% that aren't open? I obviously can't run Fremantle on my N800.. so I'm oblivious to it as a simple user. Looking at Diablo.. I can NOT understand why I'm forced to have to have a web browser I don't want (MicroB) when I have Tear, an email client I never use (I don't really like checking email on my N800 anyway--but if I were going to, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't use the one it came with) and a host other other applications for which I'd rather use the truly open alternatives for. Did Fremantle change that too? Just hoping so--given what's said, it sounds like it. I hope.

This really just bends down to some bad design decisions, - it is entirely possible to remove applications, except it's not as easy as it could be (due to the way SSU was made in Diablo). In terms of web-browser lock-in, there's another thread where people devise how to unlock it - based on work where we simply asked a developer of MicroB on how it could be done

The browser engine is used to display HTML in other applications... but anyway it's OSS.

In the Fremantle platform an important new closed piece are the OpenGL ES libraries.

Ho, no, they will add new closed code ?

I thought that Maemo 5 would be more free ...