So at the end we have users (who want to know and in the meantime are left to speculation and little else) and developers, who are users themselves (and therefore carry the same curiosity) but able to start enjoying and working in the next release without needing a device announced as a condition sine qua non.

Still, you don't see every day companies pointing to open hardware platforms like the Beagle Board or releasing the kernel source code before any related product is out. Users still might prefer 'blurry pictures' but to developers these steps tell and give a lot more. And we do those pre-releases because we care about open source.

Nokia takes different strategies for different products. For instance, there you have the N97 announced last December out of the blue.

And still, who is risking more combining open source approaches AND devices that sell, both together? In addition to Maemo, Nokia is driving the transformation of Qt to the LGPL model and the transformation of Symbian PLC in the Symbian Foundation. Not bad if you are looking at risks already taken.