Qim, I don't think anyone is saying that all the systems work you have been doing on Linux, Maemo, Hildon, and user interfaces was easy. We who saw it from the start, with ITOS2005 onwards, had the ABI change in 2006, then the API incompatibilities in 2007, more or less understood the need for them, grumbled, and accepted them.

But this is just the infrastructure, the foundation. Something users take for granted, however hard it may have been to create. They also mostly take for granted that any pocketable, computer-like device will carry PIM software, and no amount of repeating the "it's not a PDA" mantra will change that.

People here have the most trouble accepting that, perhaps because they know that while you actually have been pioneering a new domain and creating new things, the part that Nokia is adamantly refusing to do is definitely NOT innovative, and is in fact so mundane that it's understandable they look at it as the "easy" part.

Ever since the 1990's, pocketable devices like the Psions and Palms and others have had PIM software.

Heck, Psion in 1997 with the Series5 was also "creating a new category of products for the mainstream public and doing it in a pioneering way". They wrote their own 32-bit OS, EPOC32 (which later became Symbian). And they did it alone. And it could edit Word docs and Excel sheets and had an agenda that could sync with Outlook. And yes, it also had a browser and email software :-)

Sharp did the same with Linux some years ago on the Zaurus line, so it's not like it's out of reach.

If Nokia wanted to, it would be in an even easier position today : Abiword and Gnumeric are known to run on the tablets, a little corporate incentive could turn them into properly Hildonized tools. Nokia is also one of the main creators and proponents of SyncML in its phones ; a calendar on the tablet with a SyncML plugin would let it synchronize with just about anything, including Outlook and Google...

Of course, it could be even simpler to just port Java :-)

Since 2005, we have seen many one-man efforts produce useful, sometimes innovative tools for maemo : maemo mapper, mplayer, abiword, gnumeric, minimo, GPE... Some projects are lively and well integrated, some obviously have resource problems and can't keep up ; some seem to lie fallow after a promising start, like Opened-hand's Dates and the elusive native SIP client...

From the outside it certainly seems like the right nudge at the right time from Nokia could have turned either of these projects from prototype hacks to usable tools for the end user - especially the stupid one who doesn't understand that he *doesn't* need PIM software :-)

One can't help feeling there are a lot of lost opportunities here, and also a contradiction with the "deep collaboration with open source projects" manifesto. Especially as it is clear that in the meantime, resources are also consumed in partnerships like Navicore, Skype et al.