thanks,
Finally a reply with real content.

thanks for letting me know.
the ovi store suxx (sounds too much like symbiansigned.com).

but that demonstrate my point, the ovi store is not part of the platform (unlike apple store), you can set up your won repository and provide links to it from normal web pages (not complex for a user to configure).
like what firefox did.

and if you're a developer with no web server and just a small app that took a week of work, you can distribute it through http://my-maemo.com/ which is also not part of the platform.

if my-maemo.com today doesn't provide developers a payment system (like the ovi store does), then tomorrow a your-maemo.com will rise to provide that service. (just like it can happen for windows mobile based phones)

so the point is, that in both windows mobile and maemo, an application is just an executable, and a developer can publish it without any limitation from the platform or the platform 'owner'.

as for symbian, there you can also distribute applications outside of ovi store, but you can't distribute them without certifying them.