Just finished listening to the latest Software Freedom Law Show podcast, and they had concluded that Android was the best fit for them.
It is normally a podcast that deals with legal matters around open source licensing, but this week they explained why they had standardised on Android

Maemo had been ruled out as there was only one manufacturer (or at least that was how I understood it), and there was some debate as to exactly how open it really is.

I give them a little leeway as they are USA based and the mobile market there is totally different from the rest of the world.

They make me laughing a bit

A Chinese manufacturer (forget which) announced last year they would be using Maemo for at least one of their devices.

If Maemo is not the most open soft then what is ? I must do everything myself on this phone and I'm happy

The only thing I could think is there is certain drivers and stuff that are still closed source I believe... The entire android operating system can be downloaded, compiled, and run by whoever wants to. Up to them to write their own drivers though.

Is a complete Maemo, including kernel, downloadable and runnable by anyone that wants? I've never bothered to look that closely at what minute differences between maemo and debian are.

that's most likely the reason for their conclusion, because with Maemo that's not possible right now.

a few closed packages remain:
http://wiki.maemo.org/Why_the_closed_packages

This page documents the closed packages as well:
http://wiki.maemo.org/Free_Maemo

strangely, this is a similar problem to Android (closed drivers and apps), but apparently there are some devs working on at least the hardware drivers.

The only thing you can't have with android is the google apps. But the OS itself is fine.

Correct about the drivers.. but that's anywhere. You need the drivers for the stuff. Technically both Android and Maemo use linux kernels, so compiling already open sourced drivers for, say, a desktop computer should be doable if someone wanted.

But it appears by that wiki page that some integral parts of the Maemo OS are closed source - making users unable to build a complete Maemo from sources. With Android.. you can build a complete Android OS, add the drivers and have a functioning system. You just won't have google market, and the google apps. Good example is NitDroid.

I guess Mer is supposed to be equal to the open part of Android eventually. Still, Android is a lot more isolated from desktop Linux. Do Google / vendors interact with the community like Nokia does with Maemo?