It does make me wonder if Google is doing the heavy lifting and carriers will just fork it when done and ship a closed version of the software and take advantage of not needing to pay licensing.

Well, we’re in the same boat with Mozilla. A couple of downstream vendors (Netscape and Joost) have been closed source, but for the most part licensees have remained open (Songbird, Flock, AllPeers, etc). There’s value in the “Open” brand, just like there’s value in the “Apple” brand. I’m hoping there’s enough consumer pressure for carriers to allow open Android devices on their network like they allow open Windows, Palm, Symbian and RIM devices.