I thought the HF letter was pretty well written. Reading between the lines of Jolla's response I got this from it:

"We don't have any money to give you, sorry. We're not interested in supporting old Nokia devices or operating systems, maybe if you put more support behind Mer and Nemo... who knows what may happen in the future."

Just my take.

I also thought the Jolla response very poorly written, but I'll put that down to English as a second language (along with their unfortunate "unlike" slogan.) I think we should wish them the best, but not expect any financial support from that front any time soon (if ever).