Who are they? Well, it's not just techies - there are application developers, kernel hackers, empassioned users, user experience experts, artists and bloggers. As a developer, I've got a fantastic resource at my fingertips - people who are willing to pull together, with their strengths to make their own experiences better. If I'm developing a little game or utility, there'll be other people who want to use it too - but perhaps it's an artist willing to make some icons, or a UCD expert on menu positioning and terminology. Or a Frenchman willing to translate my app.
And everyone shares in the benefits. Not just in having something which "scratches their own itch", but in concrete ways. Most activities on maemo.org - whether it's releasing an application, raising a bug, writing blog posts, rating news or a myriad of other things - contribute to a user's "karma". This is used when Nokia are deciding who to involve in discounted hardware programmes, who we pay for travel and expenses to the Maemo Summits. But it's not just the tangible benefits - there's psychologists making a tidy living on how putting a measurable figure on voluntary contributions increases the value, and frequency, of those contributions. It's certainly something I've seen.