maemo.org - Talk - Letter to Nokia.

Harmattan on N900 will very likely be available as a developer build:

"I am quite confident that we will end up having a really good developer distro for N900"

Still, since Harmattan/Meego is quite far away, committing to an answer at this point is understandably a bad business move for Nokia. Still, I understand development was started and continues on N900, so it makes sense. Personally I believe it'll be available. Also, personally, I probably will not upgrade if M5 is being patched. I'll see how it looks.

As for updates to M5, there's a reassuring list of fixed bugs implying continued development. Also, 1.2 has been announced along with new tech. There's also new apps and developments (video of games). Also, QT Mobility has been listed for 1.3 (so there's one). There's also a basket of bugs that actually have active people from Nokia wired in and it looks like they actually patch for now.

"Maemo 5 has a whole separate team focused right now on bringing you lots of goodies in the already announced upcoming PR1.2 release for Maemo 5. Nokia is a pretty big company and Maemo's not so small either anymore, we're capable of multitasking and just throwing more people at one task doesn't necessarily make it go any faster (as those who have developed software surely can testify to) "

Both quotes and the whole shebang here. There are also googleable blogs, plenty of links, etc.

Besides, at this point the best we can hope for is a positive attitude from Nokia. Nobody is going to commit outright to a project the size of Maemo years in advance, since it's not paid for and Maemo is a niche at the moment compared to -say- Symbian. And even if they did announce commitment, it could still be pawned. So for now it's more lurking in the darkness, watching and less lettering to Nokia. :)