Hi groeit,

I am probably among the very few ppl not bothered at all by the news. I still would be interested to know if N900 will have Maemo 6/MeeGo update option, but my suggestions would be for Nokia to encourage developers by:
1) Getting the OVI Store right.
2) Give developers better incentives (hey let's say developing for Maemo/MeeGo, OVI Store would only take 15% of the revenue since those developers are also part of the beta testing program!)
3) At least guarantee Maemo 5 will have QT4.6 update with Maemo 6 UI/MeeGo Framework support so developers can be convinced that the platform stability is not that worse.

Of course, now that we have MeeGo it should be easier to convince developers to develop for that, maybe not now but maybe some time in Q2-Q3 more info come out.

As for the whole Nokia giving up on Maemo 5/N900 topic, I too think Nokia should provide an upgrade path for N900 since the hardware is perfectly capable of what the new Maemo 6 device could handle. But that part is out of my control, so what I see now is N900 getting better and better after each firmware update, and the MeeGo news actually changes nothing since:
1) No one ever promises Maemo 6 will be available on N900... so it's the same situation regardless of when Maemo 6 (and now MeeGo) come out.
2) Nokia has been urging developers to develop on QT4.6 so the app will run on Maemo 6 (and now MeeGo, and also Maemo 5 PR1.2)

This merge might cast some doubt on commercial developers.... but eventually they would join the MeeGo train because, well, Nokia will have MeeGo phones/tablets/whatever in the near future. As we can sort of estimate, Maemo 6 will be more "mom-friendly" so that opens up a larger market compared with Maemo 5. And the good news is that you can start developing for Maemo 5 today and carry on throughout Maemo 6 to MeeGo. I think the key issue to all this commercial developer problem would improve a lot if OVI Store functions correctly.... Angry Bird's success alone will attract some indie developers. Afterall, money talks, if there is a success story, you can tell money is there. If there is not, you have to look at the number of unit sold X probability of each user buying an app = not that convincing for N900, even if Maemo6/MeeGo is coming out 5 years later.