New election, new council, new competition, new rules... Loaned devices couldn't be legally reverse engineered. Owned surely can. If people donate on instant messenger apps and open wifi drivers, they will surely do for a reverse-engineered n950. Assuming no component was developed especially for developer device, re-blueprinting the design shouldn't be a problem (with so many HW and SW talented members should be quite easy). Seeing as this can run ubuntu 12.04 chrooted at pretty much full speed... (rzr.fr pls tell you cut something from your vids, but looked like rt) Having all the n900 devs given opportunity to run upgraded HW, n9 market would blossom. Having devs churn out 5 progs in their free time while they only pushed 3 in paid time. Cashing on the enthusiasm would be a revolution.

Sure this is not Ask the Council thread, but still, 2 days left for voting, any electable figure would like to chime in/comment?

To be clear, is your proposal that someone who receives an N950 as
part of the Summer'12 Device Program reverse engineer it so that a
cloned device could be created by a cheap Chinese manufacturer?

If so, is the purpose of relating this to the Council to ensure that
they somehow identify someone skilled enough to do this and ensure
they get an N950?

I don't know where to start but lets raise a few things:

• What operating system would this cloned device run?
• How would it not suffer from the same flaws as the N950 (limited
  landscape support in core apps; "antennagate")?
• Patents
• Cost
• Complexity
• Copyright of firmware blobs

If this was remotely feasible, couldn't someone start with an
N900 and give it a CPU & memory boost? It's a far more satisfying
keyboarded phone than an N950, believe me.

Thanks. As to what OS this clone would run, if you did manage to get a blueprint with all the components through a factory line, would flashing exact same image you have in your n950 currently, creating a full physical backup so to speak (also should make the illegality of this exercise little less obvious if we term it this way), not work? Or is there a need to put some kind of copyrighted content onto the device in-factory during creation process (not sure if having HW copy alone would make it react when connected to a flasher, or is some read-only part required to show the dots and start flashing etc)?
As to flaws, if you get a blueprint for n950 you could introduce improvements and end up with n951 with better antenna and what not
Patents and copyright... a lawyer should look into whether creating a full physical backup of something you own is legal or not. And if answer is 'yes' are there limits on how many of those you can create. In some countries laws are stricter than in others, maybe the actual order for production of those could be placed from a one with more relaxed view on those. Chinese don't care, so this is covered at least.
Cost and complexity are problematic.

As to what it has to do with council... not sure if they should participate or help in any way, probably not considering official body and dubious legal aspects of this. Still a personal view on this tells a lot. Some candidates gave up on Nokia, some wish to keep it happy... this won't swing the election, but I thought I'd like to listen how they view such ideas.