Yes. Nokia has sold more N9's than Lumia's even though
Elop restricted sales
of the N9 to low population
and poor countries and gave it a minimal ($0?)
marketing budget. Nokia also has another Meego
phone (N950) tested and ready
for mass production,
but Elop refuses to sell it anywhere. Perhaps
too many
Germans were driving to Switzerland to buy
N9's.
As for distribution of
N9's providing a patent
license, that would depend on the software licence.
GPL V3 contains explicit sections on software patents.
If Nokia are
distributing GPL V3 software that depends
on their patents then that should
mean they are
licensing the patents for use by that software and
its
derivatives. Failure to provide that patent license
would put Nokia in breach
of the GPL, and the owner of
that software could insist that Nokia ceases to
distribute it. Elop would probably throw a party.
GPL V2 dates back to
the time when even patent
lawyers knew that software is mathematics, and not
patentable. The license does not explicitly mention
software patents but does
have sections that are
sufficiently general that they should require
a
distributor to license any patents they control
that would otherwise restrict
distribution of the
GPL V2 software they distribute.
AFAIK, this has not been
tested in court.
Sales figures at this link (if Geeklog does not insert spaces in
it):
http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2012/01/how-many-lumi
a-sales-as-nokia-and-microsoft-ashamed-to-reveal-number-lets-count-and-compare-t
o-n9-me.html
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