What minefield? We're the enthusiast segment, maemo represents 0.1% of the smartphones out there.
No one makes mines for the bunch of people that we are - you can surely guess that the users on this forum represents the exact number of N900 owners considering that few do not register and some have other NXXX device.

I come from the hacked and overhacked symbian and I have NEVER EVER had a malware issue.
I use windows XP since 2004 (98 before) and I've never EVER logged in as something else than Admin and no I almost don't use anti-virus software AT ALL and NO I never lost money or data on the internet!
How does my PC stay clean? - easy! open source freeware! There's no paid software that doesn't have a better free alternative - so no I don't have to install "super extra mega new 100%spywarefree video converter cr@cked by virus lordz" on my pc.
I simply learnt to know what to get and where to get it from.

If you guys think that enabling "install from file" and some other smalltime red pill options that let you bypass install issues makes your device so vulnerable, it can only mean two things:
a) you give linux and maemo wayyy too much importance - which noone does(neither do "they" give it to winmo or symbian)
b) as I said before you're uber-geeks!

*"they" are the evil hackers that set up minefields for your maemo!


And supposing you would listen to me and give the users the nice installing options they want (don't forget the uninstalling!) what could possibly happen?
Some people might have issues & you would have to teach a thing or two about commands, unbricking and linux - like if you'd make them go through dpkg they'd learn that all of a sudden...

*noone likes the big book of linux!