The idea is simple: for any third party developer, collect donations - just when you install an app, there is "recommended price" (while it is still free), so you may donate now or later (keep list of pending donations ;-). It would be fair if Nokia collects, say, 10% for processing and pays the rest to the developer via paypal or whatever.

It is a viable alternative to "traditional" application store, isn't it? And it has many advantages. The major problem for Maemo is that development is not commercially attractive being compared to iPhone or even WM..