MeeGo's "big reveal" mentality hurting the project?

Carsten Munk, maemo.org distmaster and MeeGo contributor, has asked a question many have been thinking: does the desire for a large splash - a "big reveal" as Carsten puts it - hamper, now and in the future, the openness and viability of the MeeGo project? This desire is understandable for closed product launches, but was always the biggest impediment to true community collaboration on Maemo itself. However, the noises made by both Nokia and Intel - both of whom have a lot of experience now with open source development - at the launch of MeeGo were promising. Carsten doesn't think they're walking the walk, though: We're not working in the open like we're supposed to - even though as has been said - Intel, Nokia and we all know how to do it! But when there's a big reveal mentality active, the mode of the people participating switches to internal/private development, even if you are only tangentially related to the object/UX being revealed. Carsten poses three questions to MeeGo's Technical Steering Group:

Has this mentality been hurting the project to date?

How will they prevent it continuing after the user interface is unveiled?

How will they prevent it the next time the commercial requirements of a "big reveal" occur?

maemo.org future direction meeting: Monday, 13:00 UTC

The maemo.org meta-meeting, which will seek to address the overall direction of the community - and in particular the paid contributors - will be held today (Monday, 17th May) at 13:00 UTC on #maemo-meeting. Everyone is invited to attend. The agenda, put forward by Dave Neary and Andrew Flegg is: Review of progress over the past year of maemo.org team (open discussion); Setting priorities for next 3 months for the community - not micro-tasks, but larger goals; Allocation of ownership & co-ordination responsibilities within these tasks to members of the maemo.org team; A full & frank discussion of the impact of the MeeGo project on the short-term goals of Maemo. It may be still early to make some decisions - and the viability of MeeGo as a day-to-day operating system for N8x0 and N900 users will play a large part - however the framework for these decisions will be made here; as well as the overall goals so that maemo.org doesn't descend into a "wait-and-see" mode for the next six, nine or twelve months.