Just had this idea while I was in the shower....
Seem to do much of my brainstorming there, dunno why

I put it to the community that we ask the council to setup a N9 purchase fund for longstanding community devs/hackers.
Is there already a precedent for this, perhaps something similar was set-up in the past?

This donation pool would focus solely around the N9.
It's pointless donating towards N950's for devs because:
1) They're difficult to find, & over-priced.
2) Nokia provides no support whatsoever.
3) Outside of the community & official dev programs, they're illegal to own.
4) Why buy a device for devs, for which they may focus on features not available to N9 owners?

The reason I think we should go ahead with this ourselves...
Is because Nokia's only handed-out a very tiny amt of N9's to community devs so far.
They haven't even actually delivered most of those as far as I'm aware.
I believe qgil was going to try & set-up another community dev program once N9's become more wide-spread.
But as yet I've not heard any more about that, & I think it's best for the community to have one too anyway.
I believe similar programs work quite effectively at xdadevelopers etc.

So with that I'd love to hear some ideas on how best to structure this.
Should we take running polls & as there's enough money, allocate a N9's to devs most suited to the most popular features?

So no one's interested in such an initiative/concept?

maybe not this blindly, more information would be needed about the developers that this would target

1. a list of developers this would be targeted at
2. what they have done before
3. what they would be willing to do if they receive one of the community funded N9's

If this community donation route would be taken, then the community would also expect the developer to "keep his end of the bargain", and return something back to the community with programs that the community wants

http://mynokiablog.com/2011/10/26/n9...per-days-2011/

Thanks mooglez, some good thoughts...
Maybe I should approach someone from the maemo community council.

@chrisp7 that's great news!
I still think we should continue this though if we can.

i asked Nokia if we can get n9's from their 'developer device program' (or why we can't) and they forwarded my request somewhere and never replied again...
I will ask them again I guess, it's been 2 days now.
Anyways, most developers that wanted to do some open source projects got n950s already, I think we need more time rather than more devices

Keep plugging away man... don't give up...
There was N950's handed-out as part of Nokia's DDP (i.e. for commercial focused devs)
But Nokia never disclosed how many it handed out, or whether it still is etc.
250 were handed-out as part of the community device program....

I'm waking away from TMO & MeeGo forum for while...
I've a bunch of way more important things I need to focus on.
If anyone else wants to run with this, it'd be truly awesome.

I got a reply today, they said there is no equivalent program for the N9. I'm not sure what they mean by equivalent. I'm trying to get them to at least explain why my developer account has a section to purchase devices that is always empty. It even says something about a sale recently.

There was supposed to be a commercial dev program, saw it outlined in their forum over there.
I can't remember where exactly now...
But maybe it was for only limited no's, and they've since closed it?
Dodgy bastard Elop, is dodgy bastard