[maemo-developers] Why should I write apps for Maemo?

[From: Michael Cronenworth]

The continued delay of PR 1.2 has caused me to pose this question.

Without customized packaging, I cannot reliably publish applications to 
the global maemo.org repositories at this time. Also having APIs in flux 
without knowing when the new version is coming out makes me even less 
interested. Sure, you can compile a new kernel or create a trivial 
application all day long and ship it today, but I wish to write some 
rather advanced applications that cover a broad range of APIs.

At most, the SDK should have been released two weeks ahead of the final 
release. With a little over a month now on the clock, people can only 
begin to speculate as to how poor Nokia's release management is working. 
I, as a software developer, realize that unexpected issues can occur 
causing unexpected delays, so this e-mail is not a "Nokia hurry up" 
plea, but a concern that developing for Maemo requires a serious 
commitment to add checks for multiple versions of APIs and packaging 
requirements.

If I relied on the ability to publish commercial applications to the Ovi 
Store, I'd be living in the street. It's been six months and the Ovi 
Store for Maemo is still without a commercial solution and is extremely 
limited in general.

In closing, I have a few questions to propose since communication from 
Nokia in general is hit or miss (some are better than others, I realize):

-Why was the PR1.2 SDK released at the time it was released?
-If there will be any updates >PR1.2, have there been discussions on 
changing the staged release of the SDK?
-Is PR1.2 still going to be released? (I am not looking for a release date)
-Where are those Ovi Store applications that we have been taunted with 
videos of?
-Will there be a commercial solution with the Ovi Store or should I 
expect to create my own retail store?

Michael