K. One last post. And don't take that as "this is rhetorical and I don't want a reply". I would love to continue the discussion, but I'm getting the feeling that we're at a bit of an en-passe. So I don't really plan on replying more unless that changes, though I do plan on reading replies!

First, Flandry:

Bingo. You really can't do one without the other. Techie devices will never reach their potential because resources will be too thin (ala OpenMoko). On the other hand, making a popular device too tweekable also makes it quite breakable. I think there's a middle ground, and really the N900 has come very close to hitting it. It just erred a bit too far on the geek side.

As for the vehemence toward MeeGo, I'll touch on that near the end.

Please, tell me, when Nokia pulls the plug on MeeGo for real and pulls back in the NDAs and the associated source and funding, how will _governance_ help you continue to update said binary blobs any better than the ones shipped with Maemo 5? And with MeeGo continuing full steam ahead, updating for new and better platforms, adapting it's APIs to new and better hardware; how long will it be before those blobs go stale and become useless? One major revision? Maybe two? How soon will that be? Will MeeGo be as solid on the N900 as Maemo is now before that happens? Will we be in a better place, "frozen" in MeeGo 2.2 than we are now in Maemo 5 PR 1.3?

I get that... but how long do you think that window is going to be open if MeeGo really catches on? How long until it fragments, and closed bits start popping up, for Intel, for LG, for Nokia? How long before infighting happens between the governing groups? How long before trade secrets creep back in, and the community is put on the back burner? And then you're beholden again. The bigger the success, the faster it's going to explode.

I'm not saying governance isn't important. I'm saying it's potentially short-lived if you don't have access to the source under it. I've seen groups with lots of say into what went into version 1 and 2, only to be screwed when the company decided to go another way for versions 3 to 20, and took away those governance rights. Remember Linux on the PS3? Source + tools + access = power. Anything else is an illusion.

Without the source, you're still stuck with binary blobs. Blobs eventually go bad when the thing they belong to doesn't stop at the same time they do. MeeGo will have newer blobs, sure... But those blobs will be trying to keep up with a moving target. Tell me, would you rather have an old Win98 driver that works with a couple know issues, or a WinME driver that's 6 months newer that might fix one of the issues? Sometimes newer isn't better.

Have you not noticed there's still work going on here? There are new apps showing up in the repositories every day. There are still new kernels being developed and tweaked. New ideas and things happening. Yes, there are closed lumps, but many of them they're replaceable, or have a solid API that provides "essential functionality" needed to do the job it's set to do. Sometimes the lumps got in the way (BME vs h.e.n. being a key example), but for the most part, it's not that bad.

I have a device right in front of me that fits that description exactly. It's an OpenMoko FreeRunner. Their goal was to provide a bare-bones set of libraries to use the hardware, then hand it over to the community so they could "make it do what they wanted it to". You know where that went? In circles, really fast. It fragmented before it was released, honest. The internal team fragmented and started working on a new base AS the device was shipping. There are now 15 different distros for it, and none of them can't reliably pull off basic functions most people associate with feature phones, yet alone a smart phone. Hardware wise, the only delta between it and the N900 was a camera, a 3G chipset, and slightly faster CPU (A7 vs A8). Google it and check it out some time. Is that what you really want?

From the looks of the MeeGo bug list I'm looking at, all the hardware enablers aren't in place yet. Wifi is still flakey, accelerometers are still unhappy, and several other bits are still not right after months of trying. Yes, I'm happy to hear it's getting better more rapidly than a couple months ago. But again I ask, to what end?

What do you want it to do with your N900 that it can't do now with Maemo? Is re-inventing the wheel going to help that? What support do you expect to see when/if an actual supported platforms start coming into existence? You don't strike me as the type that want's "Angry Birds - Rio". And yet I don't really see anything in Maemo that's lacking that you'll be able to pull off with just a change of OS.

Wow... Way to lump everyone in. Your either for MeeGo, or a noob demanding things of developers? No middle ground possible? Way to get people interested in "joining your team".

And now we see the true colors... And why people are hostile toward MeeGo here.

I'm a developer and an end-user. I came in with a good understanding of what the gadget was. I was elated to have a device that was "80% done". I was able to hack it to do exactly what I wanted, and a few things I didn't even know I wanted it to do. Sure, I'd love to have had flash 10 support and a vector based GPS system with turn-by turn out of the box. But what's available now, and what we've created together here, is actually quite nice.

I too expect to have my N900 for a long time, probably at least another 3 to 4 years. I see it running Maemo for most of that time right now. I had my N6230 for 5 year before this one, and I still have tablets at home running Windows 98, chugging along happily. Far from being a "dead-end" platform, I see support for Maemo/N900 it all over the place. No, it's not from Nokia, but then I didn't expect a lot from Nokia. I was actually note expecting 1.3 at all, I figured we were done at 1.2.

The community of people (users and developers) we have here though is beyond what I'd hoped for, and something I want to protect. From my perspective, based on what you're saying above, you're looking to pilfer that community with the promise of a half-baked cookie that may some day be almost as good as what we have now. That's why some people here are so "hostile" toward MeeGo. They've seen this before, and watched it tear apart communities, leaving nobody a winner. I for one don't want that here, which is why I pose these questions, and why I'm reserved about how much people are advocating for it.


Anyway. I'm betting at this point we're not going to see eye to eye on this. You've made your goals pretty clear, and I applaud your directness in doing so. We both have a different view on what's important, and how long either platform has a chance on living on the N900.

And yes, again, I think it's great to have updates on MeeGo posting back into this community. Who knows, if your vision comes to fruition, maybe most of the community here will transition and move to MeeGo, with continued support and happy new widgets and what not. Of course in your opinion, that could be a bad thing, what with all the people showing up and demanding things, no?

Either way, I wish you luck in getting your community up and running, as well as getting the N900 stable under the new OS. My only hope is that your community doesn't come at the expense of this one, at least not any more than it already has.

Good luck!