I've previously stated what happened with my N95 with a flip of a switch from Nokia (loosing its most marketed functionality in my country). To say that I was dissatisfied would be a gross understatement. Yet, despite all that, I still ended up with N900. So far, at least in the past ~15 years, my experience with Nokia has been somewhat sour-sweet (one device awesome, one device crap), but that's usually how end-user dealings with companies are, and I don't think I can name more than a few companies that never f-ed me up. And I'm perfectly fine with that. That's just the way it is.

I'm just trying do differentiate myself from the resident whiners and express my point of view that goes a fair bit beyond the device in question.

In the past few months, and especially in the past few weeks since I've had the pleasure to dive in it directly, I felt in love with the Maemo platform. N900 is probably one of the best gadgets I've ever had pleasure to own, period. And even if Nokia is to declare that Harmattan won't be supported on the N900, and even if couple of bugs I find mighty annoying, or a couple of essential missing features are not to be fixed on it EVER, I'd still buy it. Even at its current state, it quite fulfills most of my needs, certainly more than anything pocketable out there, and I don't regret giving 630€ for it, not for a second. So, most of the whining directed towards N900, crying how `this will be my last Nokia if...` and similar sorts of childish emotional blackmails certainly ain't my cup of tea.

However, naturally, I do feel as a part of the Maemo community, and I do care what will happen with it in the future. And for it to have any future, IMHO, some issues must be ironed out. It's irresponsible for Nokia to treat N900 as a side-project now when it does have a `critical mass` of users - at this point, I'd argue, that N900 is more important for the acceptance of the Maemo platform than the next device. It's not that there will be no new users in the future, and it's not that whenever their device with Maemo 6 comes out it won't get its own `critical mass`, but by turning their focus away from N900 and towards the next device they will alienate plenty of Maemo early-adopters. And it will leave far greater dent in the Maemo platform acceptance than ever before. People will be rightfully disappointed if their `new shiny preciousss` ends up as Nokia's expensive experiment. And those people will advise their friends to stay clear from Nokia, and what's more saddening, from the Maemo itself. And with the present market and fierce competition in this area, Maemo will have a hard time to get through, so the public outrage would be the last thing it needs. I would like dearly for Maemo to succeed for a number of reasons that cannot even fit this board, and that's why I am concerned with the current status, and I'm asking Nokia to give the N900 more support. It will pay up in the long run for the both sides - Nokia and it's users.

And that is just from the user perspective. When I switch to developer perspective things get even more problematic. I've contributed to numerous more or less successful FOSS projects, and I actually make a living by developing open-source solutions or at least partially open-source solutions. Maemo as a platform, even if not as opened as I'd like it to be and as general opinion is, simply begs to dive in. But the bar for a developer is slightly higher than the one for a mere consumer - while the latter requires a simple money investment, the former also requires the time familiarizing with the platform, SDK, its quirks and glitches, its limitations... And without a clear picture of what will become of Maemo it's not very persuasive argument for a developer to jump in on the bandwagon. If the Maemo platform ends up as a catastrophic failure (I'm almost certain it won't, but you never know...) it's hours and hours wasted, and that's what professional developers are trying to avoid. I'm not talking just about me, I'm talking about big developers that are in the end what will define it's success on the market. And so far, Nokia seems too quiet on addressing the rising concerns about QT portability, the future GTK+ support, and such, not to mention how the platform will evolve and what will be required from the developers to stay in the game. How can I be sure that I won't need to rewrite my app from scratch to make it work in the future versions of Maemo? I'm not even sure that all the time I invest in exploring the Maemo structure will be of any merit on the future Maemo platform. Sure, we have a rough road map, we have more-or-less open Bugzilla, heck, we even have some of the core developers on this board, but that's just not enough, or at least is not assuring enough for major developers to dive in...

Without a more positive feedback and definite support from Nokia themselves, one has to ask if they are indeed serious on bringing the Maemo to fulfill its potential, or are we just serving as guinea pigs for some Nokia's side project that might as well never get to a place we know it could belong.

Just my 2¢...