[maemo-developers] Nokia and MS

[From: Andrew Flegg]

On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 9:30 PM, Sivan Greenberg <sivan at omniqueue.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 9:00 PM, Andre Klapper <aklapper at openismus.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, 2011-02-11 at 13:25 -0500, Demetris wrote:
>>> How does this affect the future of Maemo on Nokia's devices?
>>
>> For quite a while the future has been MeeGo instead of Maemo, hence no
>> changes to *Maemo* on Nokia devices.
>
> AFAIK it is in the hands of the Maemo community [council] no?

I've three hats to wear:
  * Editor of this week's MWKN
  * Maemo Community Council member
  * Long-time Maemo enthusiast (five and a half years!)

All three are intertwined, but this isn't the official position of the
Maemo Community Council...

Personally, the N900 represented a zenith for me. It was my first
smartphone, but my fourth Maemo device. I hadn't realised at the time
that it might be a "Concorde moment"[1]. MeeGo represented Nokia's new
direction: an open, Linux-based, strategic vision. A range of devices
from Nokia and other manufacturers. The Harmattan device would be the
first: a flashier UI, smaller, faster, longer-lived battery-toting
version of the N900. That's all I want: a smaller, lighter, faster
version of the N900 running an evolution of Maemo 5 (primarily with
some bugs fixed and more apps) which I could rely on all day.

Nokia are now not going to deliver that entirely. It's *possible* the
MeeGo device released "this year" might be interesting in the same way
that the 770 was. But unlike the promise of the 770, I suspect it'll
be stillborn.

But there is a benefit to this that I can see. With no clear successor
for the N900, some people will keep theirs for a bit longer, others -
who may have been waiting for the Harmattan device - may now buy one.
This means the Community SSU can have more users, more developers and
more polish:

    http://wiki.maemo.org/Community_SSU

Already we've seen patches which fix hildon-desktop's CPU eating bug;
make Modest work better offline; make Modest more conformant to
standards; an improved TV-out control panel plugin; an improved
notification LED control panel plugin and so on. Many of these also
widen the system's support of portrait usage.

We also already have improved development tools with the Qt SDK.
Although there may not be a compelling new device, we have a
reinvigorated platform. Maybe that's enough.

Thanks,

Andrew

[1] "For the uninitiated, a Concorde moment is one where mankind reaches the
     pinnacle of its achievement - ever since the Concorde no passenger aircraft
     has been built that can fly supersonic, and perhaps none ever will be. It
     is all downhill from there." -- http://bit.ly/g3c0PU

-- 
Andrew Flegg -- mailto:andrew at bleb.org  |  http://www.bleb.org/
Maemo Community Council member