After reading the post at the beginning of the thread I was gutted.

However, two things spring to mind:
(1) Nokia has never announced an official MeeGo port to the n900
(2) MeeGo is more open source than maemo will ever be.


If we assume that Nokia's "No MeeGo for the n900" means no commercial apps (e.g. skpe, facebook, OVI maps) or Nokia livery (e.g. Nokia logo on startup) then maybe it is not as bad as it sounds.

Maemo's underpinnings is not open source in the slightest. GPS, phone and battery management software is closed-source. You cannot even write a new "phone" app because the "driver" and application are the same thing(?). Not as if you can link your custom phone app to a library and make phone calls.

Non-offical MeeGo seems to be progressing well. As far as I know the MeeGo team are having problems with the battery management and I think they have developed an open source phone library. Most of the work is done. When the foundation is complete any UI can be installed on the top of it.

As long as all the hardware of the n900 is working with MeeGo then there is a good chance a community-based "n900 Linux distro" can be developed and maintained.

If this is the case then Nokia have just "shot themselves in the head" and removed their relevance from MeeGo and any decent chance of a proper "smartphone".

The key thing here is as long as there is an open sourced stack that enables the hardware for the n900 then we can use the device as we see fit.

When Nokia do release a new device based on MeeGo would you seriously recommend it to anyone based on your experiences with the n900?

I would say no and would be unlikely I would buy a "premium" device from Nokia again.