Apple charge $4.95 for the latest software update. Would you pay for N900 software updates?

Id pay if it offers dual booting w/ nxt gen Symbian =D

OMFG I hope your joking......

Haha nice.

It depends on what the update involved, but since this is supposed to be open source arena I'm pretty sure it wouldn't go over well. I'd rather pay a small price for the app. Already paying a large amount for the phone/tablet should cover updates. At least paying for apps will go straight to the developer (usually) and not a large corporation that makes their money other ways than software updates.

i have 2 answers
ANSWER 1: no b/c I don't see why I should have to pay to update a device what is buggy like n900, it should be put correct free. if they was to charge to put a device in stable state then we'll end up having Companies intentionally putting out buggy devices so they can make a quick dollar on the update.

ANSWER 2: if the device was stable and practically bug-free to start with then I would not mind paying for new features in a update as long as the features make a substantial difference to the device's usability

Apple also sucks, but that doesn't mean Maemo is going to join it

The whole idea of buying the phone that uses free opensource operating system is that you get the software for free and can do with it what ever you want. And that anyone can contribute and make enhancements to the software.

Not everyone can change something in software. But at least everyone can test it and write bug reports. It's a contribution too. And debugging of a complex system is not an easy task.
There are not so many closed components in maemo on support of which we relay on Nokia. Even if Nokia stops support of old devises community can backport new software on them. And this changes then would be available to everyone. And paid support will only lead to piracy. I think it would be more profitable for Nokia to release a new devise when to provide paid support for old ones.

Not only does paying for updates blow up the maemo spirit and way of thinking, but it would also be pretty much wrong, considering the updates will be mostly bug fixes or enhancements that have already been promised to get people to buy the thing.
The latter applies to apple too, but they never bothered with right or wrong

So what kind of software updates are we talking about? Software fixes, like from Maemo 5 to 5.1? Or to subsidize making Maemo 6 run on Maemo 5 devices (i.e. the N900)?