firstly, woody, no offence taken mate. I didn't know if the issue was revolving around responsibilities regarding support as opposed to the legal stand point. I take on board your concern regarding your link to HiFo, so official images, as it stands unless some miracle happens, is out of the picture.

as you seem to have a better understanding of the legal aspect, do we have a defined list of the elements/libraries etc. that are affected, i don't just mean the closed source wiki page, which prevent us from hosting. Is it the 3rd party elements only or Nokia closed source apps as well we can't ship? Or simply anything in non-free repository?

if these elements are distibutable/available via repo at present, what would be ramifications of creating a stripped out image with these elements removed. would we be able to ship that as a firmware image or woud we need to go completely away from original images and created something from scratch, eg. using something like the debian wheezy image.

From my point of view, the concern is where to put my efforts. If down the line we can use a legally-sound, slimmed down and frankenstein'd nokia+cssu based image, i know to keep plugging away with what we've got. If we need to abandon them for a completely new image to be able to make it hostable then i'll switch efforts over more towards wheezy.

I've already had several projects i've had to put on hold because of outdated compilers/libraries, such as microbe and a jasper port, so I don't want to keep hitting barriers, especially one as great as not being able to flash devices.

That last point is especially an issue for the Neo900. Most of us around here would love to be running Maemo on it if and when its released, but unless you have a copy of the image laying about (which most of us probably do), how's any new users going to be able to experience it? No new users, no new devs.

i don't like saying this, because i don't like getting involved in some of the he said this, he said that arguements around here. Woody and joerg, just like pali, fmg, mag, smoku to name but a few, you two are big names in the community. for smaller devs like me, think about the negative impact this kind of behaviour has.

yeah, the neo900 team made a decision with original donation set up, which has upset some people as events unfolded. new ventures will always have issues to overcome, just unfortunate it affected money side. i don't see what its got to do with hosting images though. I've seen the same treatment to estel by several other members. he raised an issue, got a bit vocal and then everyone ganged up using body shell replacement against him. equally, think about the time and effort woody has put in to cssu.

from respected members of the community, i'd expect to see better.