Its not this simple IMO.

Yes, I would pay a one-off fee to upgrade to MeeGo. No, I would not pay a regular fee just to upgrade to the next minor version.

Lets not forget though, Apple offer free upgrades to the iPhone and even the iPod get minor updates for free with only major OS releases being charged. I realise its comparing apples to oranges but if Nokia want to ever regain any brand loyalty they need to look at what the competition are doing, and do better. They have far too poor a reputation now to even just do the same as everyone else, they need to offer more.

At the moment I am on the fence about what I will get next. If Nokia are the only ones offering the features I want, then I will probably buy from them. However if is there is a comparable device by someone else, I think I would go with the someone else as I do not trust Nokia to support me through the lifetime of my device.

As I have said before, if the N900 continues to get updates over the next year then my faith in Nokia will be somewhat restored. However if they stop updating before my contract runs out, they will confirm my fears that they have no vision whatsoever and treat us like crap.

It doesn't matter if its a simple port between MeeGo and Maemo support now, chances are Maemo will still have bugs which prevent some apps from porting successfully so Nokia need to be willing to fix those bugs if they really want a competitive marketplace. Do we really think the Meego API is just going to be frozen from the get go? No, it will evolve and so those changes will need to be back-ported to Maemo for the software to remain compatible. That is not merely an end-user problem, I know if I were looking to write an application for Meego I would be thinking of sales and effort. A simple port to Maemo drastically increases potential sales, however if its complicated to port or a feature is missing that makes the port complex or impossible, I would think twice of bothering with Nokia at all.

You just have to look at Microsoft vs Sony in the console wars to see how much effort its taken for Sony to get people on board, because the Microsoft development kit is superb and makes Xbox/PC porting a breeze. Heck, I wrote a simple application for Windows Mobile in a very short time, yet I haven't even really gotten started on my N900 because its far too complicated. Microsoft holds your hand so as a beginner its easy, the N900 of course just uses open-source so very little hand holding at all and now I am stuck. But the N900 should not suffer from the drawbacks of open-source, that is the whole point of it being MOSTLY open-source. Nokia should be implementing the missing link (and ideally, an open-source missing link to gain support/good will from the community) to make writing for Maemo/Meego as easy as it is for Windows, if they are really serious about what they are doing.