Well, looks like this is the end of the road for Nokia, and a huge step backwards for open computing too. (sigh) The brand will probably be around on ever-more-commoditised devices for a while, but as a meaningful company they've effectively committed suicide. It's over.

As a Finn, it doesn't even matter to me if they stay in Finland or not, because their heart has been ripped out. They are no longer significant.

The most frustrating part is that they didn't go out fighting, they just meekly handed over the keys to a rival, regardless of whether they got any benefit themselves. Microsoft didn't even have to buy them.

We will never know what would have happened if they'd released MeeGo properly, or the first proper updated version of Symbian (without the antiquated Avkon interface that is still in S^3).

So, had to come back here one last time, because Maemo was by far the coolest part of this whole trip.

The one thing I'd like to suggest is this community gets behind some other open source computing platform which is viable (i.e. which has strong and long term support from one or more major manufacturers). This is a very dangerous time for mobile open source, as we may theoretically end up with Windows vs iPhone, two closed source platforms run by companies obsessed with controlling and milking users.

I know this won't be popular, and I really don't like saying it: the only obvious candidate that springs to mind is Android, and that will be my next phone and tablet, the first time I've bought a non-Nokia for my personal use. But whoever you choose to get behind, make sure you get behind something open, as it would be a shame to see all this energy simply vanish.

A lot of people say open source is a geek-only thing, but it is more important than that. Being able to switch off platforms, control content and dictate terms to users is going to become a potentially very dangerous situation for all of us.

We should not have a platform where the platform's makers can remotely control, change or even deactivate software installed by users. Even books are becoming vulnerable on things like Kindle, where Amazon has made titles simply disappear as if they had never existed, all legally and within their terms of use.

Facebook got a lot of praise for its role in Egypt, but it had nothing to lose in Egypt. In other parts of the world it has simply wiped away entire online communities without any explanation, for reasons which we can only guess at.

Closed platforms are dangerous, and the more digital our societies become, the more dangerous these kinds of closed platforms will be.

With all this in mind, as we enter what may be rather dark times for open computing, here are some words to end on:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJcAyYc78f8