If I understand this issue its a lot like what Verizon used to do (and still does) to some extent to phones sold thru them here in the US.

They would cripple phones features (like bluetooth or tethering capability), put their RED color home screen branding on all phones and add unnessary software on top of the original ROM etc etc.

While I do detest these practices - its still upto the customer to reply to that with their wallets. In fact Verizon lost a lot of informed customers and theiwe were lot of protests against such practices and now Verizon has changed all that a lot (look at Droid). Why did they change ? - Partly because of customer complaints - but more so because of industry changes and competing platforms which took away the Verizon advantage. They had to respond to the market displacement in a positive way and they did in some way.

I think the same will happen with Orange - as long as people dont buy from Orange they are OK with MeeGo. Secondly the open nature of MeeGo will make other vendors provide a more open and customer friendly phone experience to customers and thats when Orange will feel the pinch.

So while initially Orange might spur the uptake of MeeGo and MeeGo based phones, am sure other vendors will follow suit. That is indeed a good sign (as qgil pointed out). The market and the openness of MeeGo will take care of that customers gravitate towards the friendlier solution and not that of Orange (or Verizon) type of companies. Its this change (albeit slow and evolving change) that will foce these companies to change their tact.

So while MeeGo might give Orange a way to lock down users, MeeGo (with a better vendor) might also displace such a closed-down fleece-the-customer model in the longer run.

That's the way most market based technologies evolve. Just trying to force phone mfrs not to work with ISP doesn't always work since Mfrs need the ISP in the short term to be able to bring phones to market.

I dont think this is such a big deal. Here is the US most customers whoc understood a bit shunned Verizon till Verizon felt the pinch. That's how its supposed to work.

Of course in an ideal world all this lock-down methods wouldn't happen at all - but the world is not ideal.