Well, i think it depends on how you look at it, because of close bits its very difficult to keep maemo up to date, then there is obsolete hardware as a road blocker too, and then there is outdated sdk which is a big road blocker too i guess, but still you can see this community is active and its running on its own now!, outdated os and dead os are two diffrent things, n900/maemo may not have official support but it still have this great community. This community and its developers are what made the maemo 5 so awesome/intresting and n900 flexible, so as long as this community is active i see maemo as still alive and kicking . I still find maemo 5 better than any current mobile os out there... Each to their own i guess. Btw you want another os to try on your n900, then why not give Arch linux ARM (ALARM) on n900 a try? Its a project by skry in Alternatives section, its still "work in progress" but its usable and intresting.