I like this idea, but I do imagine a couple of reasons why Nokia might decline this to be fair.

Nokia may not want to put the time/effort/money into monitoring the activities of a select few hobby coders.

And as we know the CSSU guys are doing this in their free time, so Nokia could hold a reluctance to entering into a contract with people who may loose interest or are affected by outside influences after a few months and sit on the code with no further progress to show for the rest of the contractual term?

OK so I don't really believe the last part myself but with the enlisted help of the maemo council, they could take the position of a "CSSU governing body" to and report back to Nokia with updates such as...

• developing the scope statement;
• selecting the planning team;
• identifying deliverables and creating the work breakdown structure;
• identifying the activities needed to complete those deliverables and networking the activities in their logical sequence;
• estimating the resource requirements for the activities;
• developing the schedule
• gaining formal approval to begin work

This could provide Nokia with a more structured offer in return for handing over their code?

This is just a suggestion really, don't know how possible this or a similar idea would be accepted. I will end my babbling now