One of the key advantages of the
MeeGo Harmattan system in
Nokia N9 over other mobile platforms is its unmatched openness. Without any modifications, there is a possibility of easy access to the sytem terminal, root permissions, and all system resources, etc. In other words, the system virtually begs for tampering with it.
This does not mean, however, that there are no restrictions whatsoever. There is a system component called Aegis to protect you . It's a kind of a guard that is designed to not allow destructive modifications of the system, by overseeing the installation of packages and reduction of permissions (even for root). This is mainly due to security reasons.