Sure. - But then: It's bad enough to do it on Symbian phones. It's not OK, not on Symbian, not on Maemo and not on MeeGo (or S40, but I think S40 won't do it anyway.)

What's odd, though, is that nobody at Nokia seems to realize how different target groups may react differently. That nobody seems to see how much this auto-registration contradicts the whole purpose of Maemo as an open system. I choose my words carefully here: I write "seems to ..." because, of course, I can't know what's being done or discussed behind the scenes. But you see, that is part of the problem:

Somebody could leave suit&tie at home for once, enter the forum in shorts, flip-flops and a t-shirt and then explain "Well, yes, we see the point. We're discussing it internally and personally, I'd want to get rid of this sms-thing in the future. Others inside Nokia want to keep it, though, so this will take some time and we're not sure if we can do it at all. I'll keep you updated."

Instead, we get this meaningless sequence of words, probably put together by a group of lawyers and marketing people who probably don't even own flip-flops.