Notices

To the previous posters: as sjgadsby said, pretty much everything stable should be in Extras anyway. Some apps such as Fennec (?) and the in-development KOffice port are hosted externally, but that's probably just for the convenience of the organizations working on them. In general, extra repositories just cause problems.
As for the idea of an app store, I'm not sure how Nokia is planning on handling commercial apps in Maemo 6, but Maemo 5 has no DRM (which is good). IIRC the Documents to Go app requires payment, but I don't see why you feel the need for an "App Store".
From the OP: "I really love an idea of getting access to a number of fully pretested, fully working applications, showing new features."
That's exactly what Extras is. Yes, there are less applications right now, but not only is that largely because this is a brand new product, you might also notice that most of the apps in there are useful, and good quality, rather than just a gimmick that they can charge 99 cents for. Free doesn't mean that the apps aren't as good. There are many more apps in progress, and once they are considered stable, then they get pushed into Extras. I don't see your issue...

People seem to think that if you open a store there will suddenly mysteriously be things to buy.

Right now, all the available, tested maemo5 compatible apps are either in extras, where they've been put by the community or in ovi where they're awaiting final sorting out of how that will work. The only exception to that was the emulators, which were removed as a goodwill gesture during legal discussion (and they're back now).

It would appear that commercial apps will be made available in ovi, so you'll be able to buy stuff there when it opens, so people wanting to develop and sell will be going down that route.

There was a discussion about hosting paid apps at Maemo because the legalities of selling through ovi are a bit complex. That was dropped when it was seen that a) the ovi demands are not quite as challenging as first appeared, just badly worded and b) In so far as they were challenging, it was to manage a legal minefield maemo.org didn't want to get into.

What mystifies me is where you think more apps will come from. If you know someone who'd like to develop paid apps - please direct them to ovi where they will be most welcome, I'm sure.

[Edit] just noticed the words "In-development K-Office port" in Jaem's post... is that for real?? [/edit]

I don't think developers are too excited to start making paid apps for N900 when there's no schedule announced for N900 Ovi launch (or I haven't seen one).

And by reading the Ovi publishing message board in forum nokia, it is clear that Nokia doesn't want any independent developers there either.

I've been developing with Qt in my day job and sparetime, but if I want to make any money with my own projects, the options are Android and iPhone.

Thanks for your commends on
Maemo App Store

To makes things easier, don't you see any chance to help Joer Gronmayer to have his maemo repos updated, installation safe and free from below named problems ?
"
Yes, library conflicts and broken applications.
"
"
No, but I have tried to help restore working order to the tablets of a few of those who did enable every OS2008 repository from Gronmayer. Often, a reflash is the only real fix though.
"

btw
iPod Touch / iPhone comes as 1G, 2G, 3G + OS version

Maemo comes as
Nokia 770, N800, N810, N810 WE, N900

Maemo 2, Maemo 3, Maemo 4, Maemo 5

OS 2006, OS 2007, OS 2007He, OS 2008, OS 2008He,

herring, mistral, gregale, maemo2, scirocco, chinook, bora, diablo

I suggest nothing but easy cross-matching.

Device -> OS -> auto selectable Repos -> Apps

Joerg is coming with really sophisticated interface,
supporting future Maemo App Store.

It's kind of like listening to a guru on a mountaintop.

Just now i agree, but OVI is also there to bring Maemo and Symbian together when they go fully Qt this year and Symbian early next year. Better to make OVI the place already than change that later and confuse people some more.

One place for all and i hope Nokia stays true to that. Main problem with services have been that different functionalities overlap while there should be one soft for example.

@tissot

from rkm
"
And by reading the Ovi publishing message board in forum nokia, it is clear that Nokia doesn't want any independent developers there either.
"
Ok, I am fully aware, you are afraid of having independent developers to establish Nokia independent Maemo App Store.

One place for all is exactly how it works for iPhone.
One interface to a number of Repos.

One interface can list both Nokia Ovi and other Repos by independent
developers.

Success is just in diversity.

Gronmayer as maintainer of Repos for maemo 2, 3, 4 (nice web interface)
http://www.gronmayer.com/it/index.ph...&system=maemo4
is exactly the right man to start
Maemo App Store for independent developers
and Nokia is free to run
Nokia OVI
for developers certified by Nokia

Both stores can be run in parallel under one interface
to attract customers and support developers.