Finally it seems this thread is getting a better discussion.

I really had no interest (or time, for that matter ) to add any more of my own comments to it, but there are a few things I would like to clarify before I let it rest.

Firstly, my decision has absolutely nothing to with emotion, spite, or childish and selfish things like that.
Unfortunately it may have sounded like that a bit, but what I was actually referring to was a lack of any constructive input as to why I should put any effort into the Maemo platform. The only good answer I received was "it's fun."

Second, just because I won't be developing anything specifically for Maemo and the Tablet OS does not necessarily mean it won't run on it. There may likely be additional libraries needed, but even if something was packaged as an RPM, there is still a very good chance it will work.

Third, for those people who think that Nokia OSSO code is elegant, please talk with other programmers before you comment. Nokia has done a fairly nice job with Hildon, and that's about it. Just about everything else uses somebody elses open source code (except a few closed source things for USA legal reasons). The actual apps which Nokia OSSO division has written are VERY simplistic and NOT elegant at all. A window manager that has no support for anything but full size windows is not "elegant." That's not to say it's not very efficient - it is! To get Matchbox down to its current size may actually require some very "elegant" code. That I like, and I thank and commend Matt on his accomplishment, and his work now with Nokia. But Matchbox is meant for something more like a small router or phone than a full pc, which is what I am interested in. I already have a phone . . .

I have nothing but praise for Nokia and the Hildon stuff they have done, and their support of Open Source and Gnome. I don't have anything against them and only have great respect for what they have done. But Nokia is basically a hardware company like Dell or Motorola, and anything like a GNU/Linux platform is way too big for any single company anyway. Even Nokia reps will tell you that 90% or more of the Maemo code comes from somewhere else. The repository server issue shows exactly how fragile things can be. I don't want to be locked into a single company or organisation with the code I personally write.

The big problem with Maemo for me is the reliance on Debian for the code base. I believe Nokia will eventually regret that decision in the same way that Canonical did. While the deb packaging is ok, the reliance on Debian packages is not. The code base is much too old for an innovative single user device like a tablet computer.

The other problem for me is the reliance on the Matchbox window manager and Gnome. In a forum such as this I won't go into the technical details of that except to say that I would prefer to avoid both libraries while retaining binary compatibility with the underlying processor architecture, X server, and utilities.

Since I am currently only concerned primarily with gaining additional productivity for my tablet, that is where I wish to focus my work. I don't do games. . . I cannot gain the functionality I need by using the current Maemo stuff. When you start changing source repositories, kernels, initscripts, window managers, and GUI toolkits what you end up with is a new OS. To get what I need requires so many major changes to the Tablet OS that it is simply not feasible to use most of the current stuff. That's the reason for my decision.

Thanks to everyone for your comments. I wish everyone a happy and productive new year.

Edit:

I'd have told everybody I had OpenOffice.org ported

While I'm building stuff right now for the tablet I thought of the above comment and felt there was something else to add:

Getting an app like OOo working usually involves massive dependency trees like the project I'm currently working on. That's why I had to start first with busybox. Getting those dependency trees working properly involves countless packages. By necessity those tend to bork up some currently working stuff. Additionally, it is simply not feasible to expect an end user, even a "power-user," to be able to get all those packages installed and working correctly. Therefore the only real solution I can come up with is a replacement for the existing distro. Of course if somebody here has a better solution I'm all ears!