realy.

1. well we had that kind of argumentation years ago with computers. well the open aproach which was tandy, apple(yes ) and finally the ibm pc succeded. now it's in use in most households. yes there are people formating their hardisks. but seems nevertheless the better aproach. and if the people were not able to install whatever they want on their computers: what effort would that be. noone realy wants to go there.
and yes as little as this devices are, they are by far more powerfull than pcs were a couple of years ago. so that is more than a fair comparison.

2. i want to be able to look at the things. yes and i do want to change things to my liking and my needs.

3. i don't like companies damaging my devices. i rather damage them myself.

4. i can give you a lot of ways to damage the device. most of them need no root access.

5. rather than being concerned about root access of the user i would be concerned about missing pam for instance.

6. most problems folks have here seem not to be some accidental rm * but failing updates, broken packages, hardware issues, and request for little trickery to get more out of their device combined with a lot of innovation. well yes and the innovation and trickery comes to gether with little accidents but seems the folks rather try to fix the things themself and only head for a support if that is not possible.

i think if the n900 was even less open it would have failed even more. if all the folks who make things work for the n900 weren't and it only had the things nokia put in it, this device would be a comparable boring machine.