I wish I could pinpoint what exactly it was; I really can't tell you what the problem was.

All I know is that since the high-water mark that was the Summit, I've crashed into a real despair about Maemo and the future of this community.

Perhaps part of the problem is that I just don't see the rewards that fms is talking about coming to developers that I really respect in this community. I can't really elaborate much on this, since this is just a feeling I get from some private discussions.

Perhaps a big part of the problem is that we're in a real state of limbo right now.

Developers don't want to waste huge amounts of effort developing for the current platform right now with all of the talk about the new platform coming in a few months, and, in the meantime, we're being encouraged from all sides to join in the Mer project, which I think is honourable, but completely uninteresting for me. Some people get a great kick out of reverse engineering and building replacement products; however, I have no interest in re-inventing the wheel. I want to work on projects that leverage the existing infrastructure to do cool new things.

But there are serious problems in the areas I'm interested in.

Just one example: The kernel is broken when it comes to recording audio and video, so all my ventures along this line have come to dead ends. Sure you can patch the kernel, but the next SSU overwrites your patch and you're back where you started.