The problem with tying to the IMEI number is that they are reasonably good at identifying a phone (though they can be changed/cloned) but they are poor at identifying an authorised user of software. What happens if my N900 is stolen? Do I have to buy the software again? Will I get a free transfer to the new phone?

The truth is that there is no practical way of enforcing software licensing. Personally, I'd be OK with Nokia tweaking apt-get and the debs to have the specific apps you've purchased come as encrypted debs that are encrypted with your public key. Combined with virtual repositories so you only get the debs you've paid for.

I think this strikes just about the best balance between draconian DRM and screwing with the Maemo internals too much and giving people what they want.

I would even accept a token (less than a couple £/$/€ for example) processing fee for Nokia to set up the digital certificate. I'd even be happy to enter my passphrase whenever I download a new paid-for app.

Your certificate would be tied to your OVI account and only be required for decrypting the deb - I don't advocate encrypting the at-rest data. The debs could even be encrypted on the fly by Nokia so they don't need to keep thousands of copies of the same data around.

Not only would this strike a good balance between control and freedom, but it would allow proper upgrades via the repositories.

Hi, I have problem here. I downloaded the angrybirds pack but I cant install it. Can you guys help me? I try the dpkg code also but still not working. I store it in Nokia N900, documents. Need help..... Thx

What error message(s) do you get?