While the foundation is open to all, and the list of membership benefits is well defined today (in the white paper), one of the benefits reads: Right to access and modify foundation source code, and contribute code to the foundation. This needs to be rethought along the lines of how the Eclipse Foundation manages committers and contributors. The Symbian Foundation is deliberately cutting off unknown sources of contribution if they make it a membership benefit. There is no loss of control in encouraging (and vetting) contributions from as wide a population as possible. Putting gates around the community early, or discouraging contributors looks arrogant and risks the community's participation and growth at precisely the time when it is most needed. Microsoft certainly demonstrated how fast you could pour cold water on a community with the Rotor project. Motorola had its early Linux community vanish. Heavy-handed control and "we know best" attitudes hampered the early critical growth of the OpenSolaris community. Who knows what sources of innovation will be cut off (and will defect to other projects) with this gate in place.