Maemo Weekly News: 13 June 2011
 

MWKN: 13 June 2011

Nokia's CTO, Rich Green, allegedly leaving Nokia over MeeGo and Elop's strategy

BBC News, amongst many others, carried the news that Nokia's Chief Technology Officer, Rich Green, is no longer working at Nokia: If, as seems likely, it is a disagreement over strategy, it is unclear what - if anything - triggered Green's decision now. Recent statements from Stephen Elop, including those we covered last week, pour even more cold water over MeeGo; a move which does not seem sensible when about to launch a MeeGo-compatible device. This has led some to conclude the Harmattan programme - even at this very late stage in its development, and about to launch - may be cancelled.

Such an outcome would be very unfortunate, both for us in the community and those in Nokia who've been working so hard on it for so longer. However, in your editor's experience, it's not unheard of. Acorn's next-generation ARM-based desktop, Phoebe, was cancelled weeks before launch in a strategic shift of the company after a change in the board. After Acorn & RISC OS, Psion & EPOC and Nokia & Maemo, companies should strongly resist having your editor as a champion.



In this edition...

1. Front Page
   • Nokia's CTO, Rich Green, allegedly leaving Nokia over MeeGo and Elop's strategy
2. Applications
   • Fixing Twitter authentication in Maemo Conversations app
   • Tweed Suit (Twitter client) now in Extras-testing
   • Got a MeeGo ExoPC? Mong now available in pre-built binary
3. Development
   • Offscreen's cross-platform IDE now available free-of-charge
   • That Rabbit Game running on an ExoPC
   • Maliit, MeeGo virtual keyboard, moves to its own home to target multiple OSes
   • BOSS, MeeGo build workflow tool, development discussion
4. Community
   • Provide feedback on MeeGo Conference
   • "MeeGo Pong" (re)naming competition!
   • Full video feeds for MeeGo Conference?
   • MeeGo Community Office meeting, Tuesday 14th June
   • Stskeeps drops out from talk.maemo.org due to noise & trolls
5. Announcements
   • WolframAlpha front-end
   • ReSiStance RSS client updated
   • Stockona - Yahoo!/Google finance app
   • Mieru - a flexible manga & comic reader

Re: Maemo Weekly News: 13 June 2011
 

so no N9? :< must google more about this rich greene >.<

Re: Maemo Weekly News: 13 June 2011
 

I think it's still more than likely we'll see Nokia's Harmattan devices. I certainly hope we do.

Re: Maemo Weekly News: 13 June 2011
 

What makes you say that?

Re: Maemo Weekly News: 13 June 2011
 

• I think Elop's "trash-talking" of MeeGo is being expanded on by news media; rather than what he actually said. (Counterpoint: Rich Green leaving)
• I think Nokia's stock price would take a real dive if they publicly said they weren't releasing a MeeGo device. (If they released a high-end WP7 phone sooner than expected and as part of the announcement, they could use a line of "we did this faster [see how good the time-to-market can be?] so do not feel the need to confuse consumers with a MeeGo device")
• I think they'd have a retention issue if they canned the work of all the people who've been working towards the Harmattan device(s).
• The sunk costs at this point must be very high.

Nothing massively compelling, though.

Re: Maemo Weekly News: 13 June 2011
 

Indeed, the counterpoints are far more compelling than the optimistic arguments you posed for a Harmattan device being released.

To counterpoint the last two:

• They appear to have had something of an attrition problem for some time now (at least a year). I have to consider whether this is all related. I doubt that cancelling a Harmattan device right now would make any different with regards to retention anymore.
• They already knew that they were going to be suffering from sunk costs--so releasing a Harmattan device now would only incur MORE cost to produce a device the company has barely a half-hearted effort going into (at best) with very little return (since it's likely that customers will notice the half-hearted effort communicated in Elop's latest press releases and public statements).

I'm just not entirely convinced that it even has a chance anymore.

Re: Maemo Weekly News: 13 June 2011
 

Perfectly sensible points. However, the whole thing would rely on being able to time the cancellation announcement with a WP7 release.

I'm not sure, even reusing the "consumer" device, that they're able to produce something that quickly.

Re: Maemo Weekly News: 13 June 2011
 

I may have been wearing my rose tinted glasses when reading articles lately, but the businessweek article in particular did indicate to me that Meego was not completely dead in the eyes of Nokia, Yes it needs a lot of work still to be consumer ready, but that they would carry on with the apparent strategy of occasionally releasing incomplete/buggy devices to the hacker/enthusiast/developer community in the same way that they have done with all of the Maemo devices. IMO they are more likely, if the kit is ready to go to push the Meego device(s) to market in a low-profile way to test the waters....

Unless Microsoft/TI had drivers etc ready to dump WP on existing Nokia hardware (unlikely IMO), or have hardware which would be quickly Nokia-ised (even more unlikely IMO), then I don't think we will see a Nokia Windows phone on the shop shelves much this side of Christmas.

The other bit of faint optimism for Meego is that Elop has pushed the support date for Symbian back to 2016. This does lead me to think that the Windows phones are gonna be coming later not earlier, and if that at least is a stay of execution for Symbian, they may also be hope for more Meego devices coming along.

The only reason I can see for Elop going with WP is to effectively out-source the software development, which is waht Nokia have been rubbish at really. Both Symbian and Maemo/Meego have suffered from late and under development over the years.

Re: Maemo Weekly News: 13 June 2011
 

It's an interesting point I hadn't considered recently - and another aspect which can either bode well for MeeGo or not: Nokia's not in the OS business anymore. Elop's outsourced their primary platform to Microsoft and Symbian to Accenture.

MeeGo and S40 are the only OSes which Nokia still maintain themselves. This gives MeeGo more life (it's the safety line to maintain a competency which one day may need to be core again) or takes it away (not in the s/w business anymore, so let's not try to)

Re: Maemo Weekly News: 13 June 2011
 

Thanks for the newsletter. I'd be interested in learning who is the "some" mentioned in this quote and an explanation of the reasoning behind it. It seems that they were half right - QGil resigned from the community office to focus on marketing the next device. I would guess that it is Nokia's support for the community that may be cancelled; not the Harmattan device.

Re: Maemo Weekly News: 13 June 2011
 

Hey Jaffa, in next week's MWKN could you mention that the Maemo/MeeGo competition entry deadline is being extended by a month? We've had quite a lot of feedback from folks keen to get involved and today we're extending the deadline to 31st July so everyone has a chance to take part :)

We're also really proud that our community members have raised over €500 towards the prize bounty so far, and we're still collecting right up til the end! Last year we reached an incredible $1000 so that's the target for this year :) Along with the main prizes of trips to the MeeGo conference in November and a chance to win N900s and MeeGo devices, there's a lot of great reasons to take part. :cool:

Lots more info can be found on the wiki http://wiki.maemo.org/MeeGo_Coding_Competition_2011

Thanks!

Re: Maemo Weekly News: 13 June 2011
 

Already noted: http://twitter.com/#!/mwkn/status/80960255302959104 :-)

Re: Maemo Weekly News: 13 June 2011
 

I'm afraid I haven't got the sources to hand, however it was primarily noted for completeness. A number of commenters on sites like TMO and Engadget were of the opinion that the perceived comments about MeeGo's readiness in January extended to saying MeeGo wasn't ready for anything, and that a CEO would be crazy to say that in the weeks(?) leading up to a product launch.

I think this is a misreading of Elop's comments in the Business Week article and elsewhere.

Re: Maemo Weekly News: 13 June 2011
 

I'd take what qgil says over Engadget any day. There will be another device and a MeeGo DE for it.

Re: Maemo Weekly News: 13 June 2011
 

Of course. However, chronology is relevant and an employee like Quim doesn't get told everything the CEO is planning (c.f. Feb 11th).

Anyway, as I said, I don't believe Harmattan's cancelled.

I'm not sure of the relevance?

Re: Maemo Weekly News: 13 June 2011
 

Of course


Glad to hear it. I was worried about you for awhile after reading the newsletter. ;)