In another discussion, http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=55762 it has been explained that the reason we do not have Chromium available in the official repos is because Nokia was warned off by somebody suing Google over Chrome. It was explained then that Nokia funds this forum, and so even hosting Chromium here could compromise Nokia, as this is seen as Nokia's baby.

There is so much uncertainty about the future of Maemo and the n900; it seems that Nokia may not even know what is happening. That is a concern, especially as I am sure this community can have no means of planning ahead in that situation.

I am wondering whether Nokia's tie-in with Microsoft was in part to extricate itself from the minefield of patent litigation that affects open source software. There was a Microsoft suit against SatNav manufacturers, and another against Novell, and more recently this suit against Google, and Nokia had a suit against Apple that I heard was just dismissed, there was an bizarre suit involving SCO at one point. I seem to recall quite a lot of suits around Linux the past few years.

I'm wondering whether the legal assault Microsoft launched against people who use linux code in embedded devices is starting to pay dividends, as others jump on the bandwagon. Some of the suits might appear frivolous, and trawling for pay-offs, but I guess they have the effect of stopping delivery of component parts of the user environment (such as Chrome). It would be very tempting to avoid the risk of inadvertently compromising patents or intellectual property that has crept into linux, and the legal costs in trying to protect such investment (either for advice or defence), and having to make much of one's own development code available to anybody for free - and work with Microsoft and develop on a closed system: that cushions the manufacturer to a greater extent.