thank god i have a boring day job I hate wholeheartedly and can't write software at all, so it's my personal luxury to keep an illusion of a perfect free software world.

I do see your point, though. And still... not being able to make money from Maemo apps the way you can from jPhone apps is not really because of the platform as such (sales figures aside). It's because there's no low-barrier infrastructure that lets you try and upload your (closed, non-free) software for sale. You'd need to do everything yourself, billing, legal questions, technical infrastructure, advertising,...
Just because Maemo is mostly open and free doesn't mean I as a Maemo user am not willing to pay for applications. (I even payed for my copy of Windows Vista and MS Office although I never use them - except to run software that Nokia is unable to provide for GNU/Linux, such as the software I need to update or backup my phone. I'm one of those people...)