How exactly does HE block it? By providing a choice? How is this different from OS2006? So I guess you'd like to limit people's choices so they need to pick free os (as the only choice)?

BTW, one can also help with Mamona.

Of course anyone is free to do what (s)he wants.

I've seen too much 'wasted' time on opie, gpe and whatever so my choice of wasting my time is collaborating with Maemo so the community around it grows and Nokia has reasons for opening it up even more. It is slow process but it is moving in right direction and we may end up with healthy open platform big enough to get into mainstream and have plenty of applications like palmos or windows mobile.