Yes, but what Nokia is doing (or rather Elop) also feels very wrong (not to mention what they did to all those devs who no longer work there).

Wanting just 500 EUR if it is lost is just asking for it

If I know exactly how, then I would be pursuing that venue instead.

This is an open offer. Consider it a brainstorming session

Bbbbbaaaaaaaaaammmmmmmppppppp

If I can only steal my brother's N950!

My N900 has just bit the dust, so I am now double keen.

To the guy who keeps asking me for $1250, just pm me you bank account number, sort code, date of birth, country of origin, CC number and I will forward the monies to you immediately.

I don't understand it. If you wanted it that bad, why didn't you go the developer way. Gone through the list of those who will get it and I think yes, it would be enough to make some "gay crap".
If you can't do this, the phone could be useless for you.
I don't think it's wrong (nobody is hurt), but blacklisted IMEI is a point. And if Nokia wants the N950 back to killall Harmattan when the winphone is ready (and gives out 250 developer winphones) you'll have a very exclusive mp3 player.

Nah, I don't think so. The only time it'd be an issue is if Nokia asked for the devices back in a couple of years. At which point, it'd be free money. But, 500EUR is enough that people won't just be 'losing' their devices as soon as they get them, and buying as many replacements as they can. And this is on top of the whole NDA/agreement not to sell it etc.

I do know that if it was cheaper, I might be interested in losing mine if it started to break instead of sending it in for warranty, so I'd have spare parts for next time. But I'd never ever sell it; I agreed to the damn agreement after all!

That being said, I'm not so sure why people want them - Near as I can tell, it'll be many months before it's 'usable': No file manager, no OC-able kernel, none of the important bits that make the N900 so valuable. So... why not just get a couple of(cheap) N900s, OC the ****** out of them, and simply know they won't last as long?
If you do a custom OC voltage profile you can probably get most N900s up to at least 1ghz; swap tweaks and such can solve the problem of memory, and EasyDebian can help with nonexistent apps.

After all that is going on with the mobile market I now did exactly that. got me a second n900 as hardware backup. This way I hope I can sit out the next two years of mobile madness and hopefully there will be other hardware available then that can be used with an (mostly) open source OS like maemo or similar.

Next I need to mirror all repos and get me burn me some DVD containing the binary stuff. then I sit back, relax and wait for some light at the end of the tunnel ...

My personal friend atm is more or less HTC, they let customers now remove the bootloader signature checks so that custom kernels and thus custom systems can be booted, I hope that there will be further steps into this (in my personal opinion right) direction.

And yes - I would take an n950 if i could get it But I simply doubt that will happen, in my opinion Nokia does not want that and will also try to avoid it whereever possible, so I won;t waste anymore resources on that - this comment is all the time I invested now and it is enough.

Seems like there already are 2 or 3 file managers availlable for Harmattan

*Sigh* If we had hardware-upgradeable phones we wouldn't have to grovel for blackmarket N950s. (Speaking of, if anyone's selling and everyone else in line is satisfied/passing, I'm just going to put it out there that I wouldn't be against sending some agreed upon sum of money if you were to 'lose' your N950 inside a package addressed to me.)

But in the grander scheme of things - seriously, upgrade-able phone/tablet hardware? Anyone with me? With me as in start-up-a-cell-phone-hardware-manufacturer-with-me-in-the-next-couple-of-years with me, which would do the above and ideally conform somewhat well to this community's standards of open development and the like? We probably would have to go with MeeGo or some other Linux derivative for the OS if it ever was done, but nothing says we can't unofficially support Maemo ports if enough of the Maemo binary blobs are reverse-engineered....

Of course, I've written on the sheer unrealistic-ness of scattered community members making a cellphone manufacturing company themselves, especially in the BS shitstorm of patent system lawsuits, on top of the actual costs of hardware development (though I do genuinely believe the software development can be strongly community-sourced, with only a handful of paid staff for some extra work/expertise where volunteer efforts or direction is lacking), but the idea has been bouncing around in my head for like half a year now, and while it's not a short-term achievable goal, I do think it's doable, would just require some very committed people, as well as the nasty affair of fishing for investors and/or business loans and/or putting up our own money on the line.