The problem with the Maemo community ditching their N900's and N9's and joining the BBX community is....support.

RIM has been, and always is a proprietary company that's never been interested in the open source world. I don't just mean you and me, but even to developers.

This cost them greatly in 2009-2012. They've learned their lesson, and took steps with The PlayBook (v2.1 is great, previous versions were a beta test). Now they've adopted Qt which is C++ derived framework, is open-source, etc etc.

They're not only trying to woo their current BB fans and app developers, they're also trying to woo some userbase from that legacy Nokia and Palm groups. They're doing so with the appeal of support and openness.

But what's to say RIM's not going to turn their backs on these fans after its built a stable foundation?

Nothing. It won't stand to lose anymore. Since "stupid people" are what drives this market. Those people who prefer to be legally bound and choose to pay more. Those people that don't understand how a device works, and only care about the price and marketing.

For this reason, you must diminish any hope of a mobile linux ecosystem. The only way you could satisfy your hunger is to buy certain imperfect niche devices from various companies (ie/ HD2, N900, N9, Jolla, etc etc).