And I think this sentiment is what might turn meego into the OS we all want. A proper phone OS, open and linux based. Creating independence of the OS from the specific interests of individual hardware vendors is key to that. I see the reliance on Nokia to date as being a hindrance rather than a benefit - other than funding and technical details surrounding their specific hardware environment.

It is the specificity that is the issue. Imagine how successful server and desktop linux would be if it only worked on a single hardware platform? And I am not talking a specific processor architecture, I am talking about its success if it only ran on a single processor type, a single motherboard chipset, a single graphics chipset etc.

Obviously this is more a description of maemo rather than meego - the meego project was about alleviating this tight coupling between hardware and OS.

But two hardware vendors rather than one and both aiming toward their respective reference platform.

We have to get through this part of meego developement and a reference platform is important, but the goal should surely be meego developed in such away that it works with a wide range of hardware, and hardware vendors see it as a benefit, and so producing kernel and graphics drivers so that they can take advantage of meego.

Nokia and WP7 reduces the importance of Nokia to meego - any new hardware they produce will be aiming at a WP7 solution - so Nokia pushing their hardware suppliers to produce open drivers will no longer be important to them.

But there are plently of other hardware manufacturers out there some with a more mature interest in open source. Identifying one of these existing phones, one with a good open source of drivers, would be identifying a far better reference platform for meego.

Meego running on HTC would be awesome, on something that already runs android. Dual boot.

That is a phone I would buy. And that might be incentive enough for vendors to consider meego as a secondary target to android when buying components.