I do believe there is a certain amount of snobbery involved here.

Nokia could easily charge to repair bricked devices if RPM/install from .deb was used. They just need to make it clear to the end user (via manual/on screen dialogue/ warranty info).

Locking the unit down (or at least taking away the possibility of unlocking areas via GUI) appears to me to be antithetical to the Linux philosophy.

I won't cry though. As long as they don't kill root access.

By the way. There is an even more puritanical group of users out there who want all GUI's and even xterm deleted in favour of pure binary code.

If you can't make a phone call by writing the binary code to do so every time you want to make one, then you should not be using this phone.