Thinking about how the BBC Trust are declaring how they Have To Have Control Over iPlayer as a client... and the fact that they've released a native Symbian app - how about the following route to enable the extension of some apps like that onto Maemo and Meego as well?

Basically - take a leaf out of Canonical's book and implement a Partner structure, and help vendors package their apps for release. Idea would be just like with commercial vendors with Ubuntu... the vendor would release the app and patches in source form if they didn't have the onboard expertise to build, test and package... and they'd leave it up to maemo/Meego/Symbian devs to deal.

Could be easier with the move to Qt across all platforms... just would mean compiling and packing 3 times for the 3 builds.

If we could get Oracle aboard for Java SE, Adobe for Flash and the Beeb for iPlayer.... along with their Radioplayer app as well...

Could this be a valid idea?

For record - Canonical's Partner programme - http://www.ubuntu.com/partners

They basically help software vendors release stuff onto Ubuntu... I'm sure Red Hat and Debian have the same process... could it be something implemented by either Nokia or the community?