Seems like everyone is forgetting that some others offer free software upgrades because of overpaid and minimal hardware upgrades.

Unlike first crappy iPhone/Android OS devices, first (phone capable) Maemo OS device (N900) doesn't have gigantic rooms for improvement at hardware at the time of release; so it may sound reasonable to pay for new software in a new hardware.

But if next Maemo device doesn't come with enough hardware improvements, it will fall to the same league with "the others" so you can reasonably expect free software upgrades, though I expect N900 to be upgradable to Maemo 6 whether next Maemo device is again filled up hardware-wise or not.