I read some of the posts here and I think waiting for the goodwill of Nokia is the wrong way. The worst what coult happen to the 770 are the Hacker Editions. They only block development of a free OS.

The solution is already in front of your nose. Currently I play with the debian image of apple2, which is fun. I use dual boot and can choose between "ebook mode" (maemo) and "all is possible mode" (debian) .

@Johnx
Why not group together with Apple2 and others to make a debian rom for all devices. The worst what could happen is that Nokia pays you a large amount of money to stop .
I think the community would support you also ...