If you read through that bug report you will see that the boundaries for a fully supported and fully tested portrait mode for all widgets depends not only on Hildon (we could still handle that alone) but also probably on plain GTK+ (upstream code with different stakeholders, priorities and speed).

We have pushed the widgets and test cases that were essential for the applications we wanted to show in portrait mode, and I can tell they look "just normal" in Fremantle.

Automatic portrait mode for everything was never promised and we were clear in the Fremantle alpha release that landscape mode is default as usual and developers need to do specific work to get portrait mode as well.

The reasoning for the wontfix for Integrate screen rotation patches into stock kernel and X server stands: we don't think the Maemo UI is ready or even should behave in portrait mode in all cases. If some things go wrong in some cases that is perhaps ok for a community patch but not for a commercial release.

Landscape mode with optional portrait mode makes more sense for what Maemo is intended. Maybe in the future the Maemo specific UI and the upstream toolkit will be more portrait-ready, but this is not the reality we have now.

Said that, a developer willing to have a portrait or a landscape/portrait application with Maemo 5 can do it.