Woody,

your link doesn't work for me, so just in case, i assume this is what you meant...
Pascal's Wager
kind'a like the idea of having faith in NOKIA (NOKIA's future?) and think it pretty much corresponds to szopin's best case scenario.

my thoughts on that:

• NOKIA has spent darn too much on Maemo to let it go & it never seemed to be for the money
  (maybe something the community here should take to heart?)
• it is still the ONLY R&D platform NOKIA has
  • (not an expert on Internet Tablets, but i think) 770, N8x0s & N900 were each in their way the bleeding edge of what could be done, at least as a "package" even though maybe not at the individual component level
  • NFC, Swype, no button... all things practically not thought of before the N9
  • wp simply isn't a good platform (for NOKIA) to explore ground breaking technologies; the NOKIA drive was hacked to run on an (any?) other wp device less then a week after the L800 was out...
  • Donna, Symbian^3's fifth iteration will support dual-core; what better way to explore this (& fine tune energy & thermal constraints) then a N10 or N960 or whatever running OS2013?
• considering PR1.2 & announced PR1.3, it seems obvious Flop has no way to stop the "R&D effort"; so far, Lumias only get crumbles of what N9 has introduced and RureView technology was introduced on a Symbian device

don't agree with szopin's worst case scenario; not that i don't believe it can happen but my understanding was that Flop already handed NOKIA's IP over to a IP Troll company which is, in essence, a m$ marionette... there is nothing left for Google (or any other company) to get, or is Maemo out of Flop's reach for this as well?
even then, would Maemo be a juice enough target justifying acquiring the rest of the wreck, just to get it?

i'm not a candidate, thus take this as a "metaphysical foray"...