So... do you want mobile Linux going mainstream or not? Do you want a serious alternative in the market based on free software and standard Linux and free desktop technologies or not? Are you going to panic every time a mainstream player joins or not?

Advice to worried people: please worry about concrete things.

I don't know more than you about this Orange case as I just read the same public info than you. Expect to see more announcements like this, some from partners you like, some of partners you dislike. Any new announcement adds more developers and users to MeeGo so, really, you should be happy about each one of them.

So it looks like Orange will take MeeGo vanilla and will adapt it to their needs. Great! This is what MeeGo is meant for, btw. If this means that they will put developers to tweak their own UX variant and create their own (Qt / Web Runtime based?) apps, great! All this will bring useful feedback about the UX layers and the API, for sure. Whatever else they do to adapt MeeGo will be also useful feedback for the platform development.

Then I guess MeeGo apps will be installable on these MeeGo based Orange devices? How can this be bad news for the developers and the users of those apps in other devices?

If you don't like what Orange does with MeeGo then don't get a MeeGo device from Orange. I really don't understand the point of whining.

"Too much influence over the platform", what would this mean in practice? Please figure this out before worrying, otherwise you don't really know what you are worrying about. Bringing plenty of bugfixes in the form of patches? Contributing new features? Proposing better alternatives for software components that they would maintain?

This is an Orange/Intel announcement about MeeGo. If you still need extra words of comfort you can ask the sources. I think I'm over my duties answering as a Nokia guy in a maemo.org forum.