One quick note: There's a reason that most of these questions have not been answered. In particular, as has been eluded to several times, it's often a fact that negotiations with a company must not be discussed before a public announcement is made about the final results. Legally, those "in the know" on this are legally obligated to not speak of it before that announcement is made. With that in mind:

• An announcement is forthcoming has happened. You may have noted a few changes already on the web site that are also part and parcel of said coming announcement.
• It has already been announced that the MCeV has been created. It fully exists, and has full documentation on the wiki. More to come on that as it finishes spinning up.
• MCeV currently has no actual holdings that I'm aware of, Maemo or otherwise. Though I am not on it's board, so may not know of some things.
• HiFo needs (for legal reasons) to either cease operations or undergo a relocation within the US if it wishes to continue operating. Since relocation is a given, it made more sense to those involved to relocate fully to where the servers were, thus the idea of the e.V.
• HiFo and MCeV board members were nearly one in the same last I checked. As such here is little to "negotiate", more to "navigate".
• There are several legal items to navigate, including how to properly transfer ownership of HiFo assets and legally spin down that entity. MCeV has it's own legal issues to navigate in preparation to take on it's role, including establishing a bank account.

Understand, corporate movement is often at done at a glacial pace. Most things require papers to be filed with courts or governing bodies. Almost everything needs to be triple checked to be sure it's all legit. Just look at how long it took MS to "acquire" Nokia's cellular division. And that was with teams of lawyers being paid 24/7 to work on just that merger.

I hope this helps clarify where we are, and why the boat is pointed in the direction it currently is.

Edit: Updated announcement bit. Apparently the announcement went out while I was away. Congrats to all involved.