Lack of DRM can hold back the development of commercial apps from what I understand
Can hold back? How? Or are you just guessing?
The binary is typically compiled for ARM making it very hard to use it somewhere else without fiddling a lot. By using a simple license key system (if the application actually is worth protecting at all), it's not impossible to circumvent it but often not worth it if the application has a price that's intended for online purchase. People in general actually tend to pay for online content if they think the price is ok.
The main incentive for companies to produce and release software is to make money. Imposing DRM is not an incentive for companies to produce software. To actually get a DRM solution that's both flexible enough to work transparently and be future proof is lots of work which costs lots of money.
If this is done to protect something that's sold for $7 a piece, the math is simple: it's a waste of time and effort and it will only hurt people who actually pay for the official version if the DRM fails to function in the future. This has been showed again and again when those who have paid for a game are forced to use cracked versions just to use the product when the DRM solution fails.
DRM is corporate smack talk that tries to solve the wrong problem.
We have the precedent of the angry birds level pack. It was pulled from the Ovi store exactly because (lack) of DRM issues. DRM sucks, that's clear, but it's also clear that many publishers have difficulty creating business models that do not rely on it.
drm hearts nobody apart from the people that pay for the items. drm can be stripped and has been done for many pc applications only takes time. drm is not the end all of application security.
It points the problem, that Ovi Store repository is wide open and anyone can install anything from it without any access control.
Smoku, if you do not want to view access (and copy) control as DRM, cool, but doesn't make the issue any less DRM. Plus, it's not just about repositories, Ovi's 'second attempt' on the N900 involved the abolishment of repositories and the switch to the straight download of debs. Of course the debs could be copied and dpkg -installed on another device, so that was stopped too. This is DRM land no matter how you slice it.
DRM is not access control. It's usage pattern control. And in it's roots is doomed to fail - you cannot give something to someone and yet not give it.
Nevertheless the post you quoted does not say anything about DRM. I would like to see a statement about lack of DRM, given the fact the post you quoted explicitly says "we know that there is no copy control on device and we don't give a sh..".
Digital rights management (DRM) is a generic term for access control technologies that can be used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders and individuals to impose limitations on the usage of digital content and devices. The term is used to describe any technology that inhibits uses of digital content not desired or intended by the content provider. The term does not generally refer to other forms of copy protection which can be circumvented without modifying the file or device, such as serial numbers or keyfiles.
That is exactly what the post talks about. They say that they are aware that applications can be copied/installed without authorization (euphemism for pirated) either via apt-get or by dpkg -i is not enough for them (so they are missing what ? Hint: some form of DRM). Do we really still want to beat this dead terminology horse ?
