Why Nokia keeps their products secret while pushing an open source approach in Maemo? The question has been raised in a way or another several times. And it has been answered also many times in thos threads.

The last time at http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...&postcount=221 by eiffel. And the GA said:

Actually is not even that.

Open source is about software but most of the criticism towards lack of openness to Nokia in e.g. the thread linked above goes around hardware aka products. Nokia doesn't aim to translate the open source principles to product planning and marketing. The reason is clear: until now Nokia hasn't done bad selling products, and even if some competitors are selling also well openness seems not to be something key in their strategies.

Then there are projects that have taken an open approach when producing hardware (OLPC, OpenMoko, OpenPandora, what else). As interesting as these projects are or have been, their open approach hasn't brought them a striking success. Yes, there are many reason to that and any comparison might be unfair. But you see why the people in Nokia deciding how to invest the budget and plan the marketing and sales feel comfortable with the open source model for software development, but no for product planning and marketing.

And this is one of the reasons why Maemo is quite open (at least compared to direct competitors) when it comes to disclose and discuss about platform details relevant to developers, but less about end user features and even less about unannounced device products.

Thank you for your understanding.