Repeatedly. Council and HiFo proposed at least 6 different ways of doing this at different times throughout the negotiations. Each time the answer was pretty much the same: They could not and would not be able to legally transfer the rights to even distribute the static blobs Nokia was already hosting. If they could, I really believe they would have, if for no other reason than to make us shut up and go away faster.

At this point there's really nobody left at Nokia to ask. The division has been entirely assimilated now by MS, and I doubt they even are aware that half the things out there are still running, or about us. (Which frankly may be a blessing...)

As for the idea of asking authors to move their app store items into the open repositories, I think that's a great idea. We'd need at least a few people to help do that, by coordinating an effort to find the apps in the store, contact the authors, make the request, and possibly help move the items in (and maybe even find someone willing to help maintain them, also an important item.)