We buy things that do certain things. If they do those things that you care about well, they serve their purpose and end up being worth the money. Things like jail-breaking are just icing.
well said - but for me, at least, the "icing" part underestimates the value of openness.
i'm near completing my second year of owning an android G1, and the thing has been spectacularly useful things i've owned. somewhere near the beginning of my second year i was increasingly frustrated with the limited apps storage space, though, and general thrashing of the android 1.6 install (perhaps due to my crowding it with apps, but i was trying to cut out unnecessary stuff, honest). rooting with cyanogenmod became pretty easy, and enabled me to use part of my 8 GB card (now 16GB:) for app storage. i'm now running android 2.1, thanks to cyanogen, and the phone is working better than it ever did at stock 1.5 or 1.6. it continues to be spectacularly useful 2 years out, where it was running out of steam at the end of one year while sticking with the stock system.
mind you, android 2 is not likely to ever be released for my phone by my vendor, and it would have been increasingly untenable for me to stick with this phone anywhere near as long as i have - despite loving the format (really decent physical keyboard, generally decent other stuff), and not seeing satisfying alternatives. for those reasons and others i could see staying with this thing for a while more - and if htc had locked out alternative os loads, i would not have had the choice.
consequently, as far as i can tell motorola phones, with their signed-boot restrictions, offer no lasting value to me, whatsoever, and are not in the running. i'll be eventually be looking for another android-based phone with a hardware keyboard - but it doesn't have to be soon, and it definitely won't be one that limits the long-term utility of the thing so drastically.
exactly what is useful can sometimes be difficult to gauge in advance, and that's where openness - allowing more options over the life of even an appliance - can be worth a lot.