The joy of all of this is that everyone will get their wish. The people who want a easy to use, seamless experience with a central payment system will use that. People who want to go to the source or get software from your friends, or whatever can do that.

The social value of the store is the shared rating system. You get to find out other people opinions about 'cool' software without even having to know them to have them...

At the end of the day people will create their own stores, and the market will drive adoption based upon usefulness.