I voted as a qualified maybe, so here's a quote, then my comment:

I shockingly (and probably for the first time ever) agree with abill on this topic. I love the idea of MeeGo, and encourage people to post information about it in the forum(s). I'd love to see it succeed, and I read the MeeGo sub-forum occasionally to stay current, see screen shots, videos, etc.

That said, there has been a core of people whom, out of excitement for the project or for more personal reasons, have been hyping it as the cure for all ills of the N900. That's not good when it's done for any particular sub-group, be that NIT, Bada, MeeGo, oFono, QtMoko, or even CSSU.

Talking about something in context on occasion is fine. Mentioning someone has old info, with a link to where to find current info, fine. Providing current information about the state of things (which one member who has since left did), very informative and fine. High-jacking a thread in another sub-forum, on another topic (even one with a mis-guided topic/poll ) and debating over 30+ posts with the thread OP over a difference of opinion is a bit over the line though.

I'm frankly surprised that infraction points weren't given to everyone involved for that, vs just the OP. I think in any other thread, there would have been a few people with a day or two of "down time". (How many have gotten infraction points on this thread for simply disagreeing with the op so far?)

So, yes, discuss it. Yes, talk about it. But please don't keep insisting it's super-wonderful and better than anything else available in every thread where it's even slightly mentioned.

And now I wildly diverge and hop into something I probably shouldn't:

As you said earlier, "If that's how you feel, then that is unfortunate."

I feel, like many, that MeeGo has taken too long to get to the meager point it's at right now. Despite your insistence otherwise, it still has several issues on the N900, many of which were talked about at the most recent conference. Even the presenters indicated that this is not ready for general consumption nor every-day use on the N900, yet. MMC vanishing at times, SMS not alerting, Wifi is unstable, and the accelerometer sensors are still not working. You'll note that I included links to the open bugs on the live bug database to indicate where I get my info on this from, since you've been claiming people aren't current on the status of DE/CE when saying things don't work.

Again, I hope it improves, and that the bug count goes down. It's already surpassed the capabilities of many of it's predecessors on other platforms (OpenMoko comes to mind). But it's simply not solid enough for most people to switch over to for daily use right now. Saying otherwise is the same trap parents fall into claiming their kid is "special". In this case, the "special kid" is MeeGo and it just got a C-. Followed by a small chunk of the devel community is screaming "What?! It should have gotten at least a B+ or even an A!" You don't get to grade your own kid for a reason... (Even home-schoolers have standardized tests.)

The same was said for Android. The same has been said about many systems with semi-closed bits. Open is open, closed is closed, mixed is mixed. Maemo and MeeGo are both shades of mixed, since as you noted, parts of both are only available via NDA. That's a reality that's yet to be broken (even by OM), since some hardware bits are closed by their very nature (e.g. GSM). MeeGo has a more open UI, great. But it's hardware level stuff is just about on par with Maemo as far as what's open and whats still under NDA (aka closed). Slant the glass all you want, in the end it's not completely open, and probably never will be.

So... That's my say on the issue. Take it as you will. I don't suspect much will change here, even with the rash of points and suspensions going on. But at least I got my two cents in before being banned.

You raise fair points, MeeGo up until 2 1/2 months ago on the N900 was at the whim of contributors who were mostly scratching itches and getting odd bits & bogs working. When Nokia got involved and created the N900 Community Edition project (previously Developer Edition), we suddenly got a huge amount of momentum, because for the first time we actually had clear goals and targets. And they were simple and achievable. So recently MeeGo for the N900 has become a much more active and viable option.

I guess there's a misconception of what we're doing here. We've always said MeeGo on the N900 will never be ready for "end users" it's not yet and probably never will be a goal for the project. And that is probably fundamentally the issue when posting things about MeeGo on this forum. There are a lot of vocal users, who feel Nokia have burned them somehow and think we're trying to create something for them in MeeGo, well, we're not. When I talk about MeeGo on talk.maemo.org, I'm targetting the developers, we need people to port apps to the platform and help us make it more complete, so we're trying to attract more involvement from maemo developers and grow our community.

I've been in the maemo community a long time, and I'm sorry if I still think that this place is meant for those of us that have been using maemo for the past 5-6 years and developing for it, these are the people we're addressing when we talk about MeeGo, the goals have always been clear.

Android was never said to have any kind of an open governance, you're completely at the whim of Google. As for hardware, got nothing to add to what has already been said

I think your post was one of the better constructively critical posts on the subject. And I appreciate the time you took to write it

To what end? It's like trying to get Amiga developers to "help out" this wonderful new project called Windows back in the 80s. Sure, it may never actually run stably on the Amiga hardware, but that's not the goal! Wait, what is the goal? To suck away developers from the initial platform? I'm not sure I like that!

The goal you're touting (as I see is) is to pull people off of the platform I'm using, that's vibrant, active, and starting to really show off what it can do, and into another that has no real future for the current hardware. For what?

Especially given that it's not even guaranteed at this point that anyone is going to make a MeeGo-based device. There's been lots of talk, tons of announcements, but we're 6 months into 2011, and even Nokia looks like they may be back-tracking now. Not to mention a complete lack of any vendor talking about doing phone support, outside of maybe LG on one device. Nokia has been quite mum on weather it's only announced MeeGo offering will have any GSM capabilities.

I don't think I could get most people here to agree on what the color "blue" is, yet alone what the goals here have been over the past 5 years. To say they've "always been clear" is farcical. More so seeing as a good number on the forum are here because of the N900, which was less tablet and more of a cross-over device.

Yes, creating an open tablet platform has been a key part of this forum. I can see how MeeGo is a natural continuation of that in the minds of some people, especially the N700/800 crowd. I can even see the desire to get people excited about it and get them to jump the shark and start working on the next big thing. But you shouldn't do so using false pretenses, which is exactly what you're doing when touting MeeGo on N900, while saying you never intend to see it for casual users.

If the N900 is never going to run on MeeGo as primary OS, via a simple update/reflash procedure for common people, then it's wasted effort. Better to put the time and energy into something useful, like getting the Calendar to sync with on-line services, or Contacts to not crash the device randomly. (Those are active bugs too, but I'm too lazy to link them right now.) Pouring time and energy into a single device that's never going to be run by more than a handful of developers, used to make apps for... who again? Who's going to use the things they make? Not N900 owners, if the target is only getting developers on to it.

To the contrary, it has been said and proven to some degree. It is open in that as a developer you can take the core, add the bits and bobbles for your hardware, and toss it on just about anything. As long as you don't care about continued development, or have a few people to manage upstream code merges on occasion, it's just as open as MeeGo. How many device manufacturers have picked up Android? How many have picked up Maemo? Which is more open? Again, it's all mixed... none of it is totally open, and claims of one being "more open" than the other often are blurred by the perspective of the person making that judgment.

<SNARK>
Besides, ask any Android user and they'll tell you, it's all open-source! They can do whatever you want on their Android phone, no really. Until you ask them to plug in a USB stick, and serve data from it to a laptop, while acting as both a web server and an AP hotspot... Because no phone can do that... Until yours can. But then you're just "showing off" with your "geeky phone". Not that I've ever done that...

How did you miss the point about open _governance_ ? I did mention it twice ..

I don't care about "end-users" the people that are here from buying the N900 thinking it was something it wasn't, that is not an aspect of the community I've particularly enjoyed having around here the past year. Talk to most developers here and they all pretty much say the same thing.

I sympathise for their problem, but I'm thinking about myself, what I want my N900 to do, not what other users want it to do, and not what Nokia want it to do.

Just to reiterate, I'm not talking about the openness of source-code for drivers or any other closed component, I'm talking about the fact we have clear transparency into what goes on in MeeGo (at least that's the idea). Which is much different to how Google operate Android.

What I want, and the main reason I've moved from Maemo to MeeGo as my target platform, is a maintained and more up-to-date GNU/Linux system for my N900. Users here are complaining about not having continued updates, the N900 is three years old, most people are thinking seriously about, if they haven't already, buying a new device. So what happens to the N900s then? I, on the other hand, want my devices to last longer, that support can only come from MeeGo. Point me to another project that has a better chance of maintaining a working and maintainable system for the N900 and N8x0 devices?

So our goals, are a set of goals designed to give the bare essential functionality you need to call a phone a phone, making phone calls, sending and receive text messages, web browsing. We have all the hardware enablers in place. From that base, you can do what _you_ want with your N900.

I couldn't care less about users that feel they have a right to demand developers develop for them. We all do this as a hobby.

That's a reasonable criticism that i can appreciate. Thanks for your post.

That's definitely something i can sympathize with but i don't think it's a very realistic expectation that such an environment can be stable in a consumer device sector these days where tech gadgets are the new hot item Happy Meal toys for kids. The very success at attracting developers leads to apps which leads to consumers wanting apps on their shiny devices.

So i sit somewhere on the fence between user and developer interests and i guess that's why i'm a bit surprised at the vehemence of attitudes toward meego and its discussion here.

K. One last post. And don't take that as "this is rhetorical and I don't want a reply". I would love to continue the discussion, but I'm getting the feeling that we're at a bit of an en-passe. So I don't really plan on replying more unless that changes, though I do plan on reading replies!

First, Flandry:

Bingo. You really can't do one without the other. Techie devices will never reach their potential because resources will be too thin (ala OpenMoko). On the other hand, making a popular device too tweekable also makes it quite breakable. I think there's a middle ground, and really the N900 has come very close to hitting it. It just erred a bit too far on the geek side.

As for the vehemence toward MeeGo, I'll touch on that near the end.

Please, tell me, when Nokia pulls the plug on MeeGo for real and pulls back in the NDAs and the associated source and funding, how will _governance_ help you continue to update said binary blobs any better than the ones shipped with Maemo 5? And with MeeGo continuing full steam ahead, updating for new and better platforms, adapting it's APIs to new and better hardware; how long will it be before those blobs go stale and become useless? One major revision? Maybe two? How soon will that be? Will MeeGo be as solid on the N900 as Maemo is now before that happens? Will we be in a better place, "frozen" in MeeGo 2.2 than we are now in Maemo 5 PR 1.3?

I get that... but how long do you think that window is going to be open if MeeGo really catches on? How long until it fragments, and closed bits start popping up, for Intel, for LG, for Nokia? How long before infighting happens between the governing groups? How long before trade secrets creep back in, and the community is put on the back burner? And then you're beholden again. The bigger the success, the faster it's going to explode.

I'm not saying governance isn't important. I'm saying it's potentially short-lived if you don't have access to the source under it. I've seen groups with lots of say into what went into version 1 and 2, only to be screwed when the company decided to go another way for versions 3 to 20, and took away those governance rights. Remember Linux on the PS3? Source + tools + access = power. Anything else is an illusion.

Without the source, you're still stuck with binary blobs. Blobs eventually go bad when the thing they belong to doesn't stop at the same time they do. MeeGo will have newer blobs, sure... But those blobs will be trying to keep up with a moving target. Tell me, would you rather have an old Win98 driver that works with a couple know issues, or a WinME driver that's 6 months newer that might fix one of the issues? Sometimes newer isn't better.

Have you not noticed there's still work going on here? There are new apps showing up in the repositories every day. There are still new kernels being developed and tweaked. New ideas and things happening. Yes, there are closed lumps, but many of them they're replaceable, or have a solid API that provides "essential functionality" needed to do the job it's set to do. Sometimes the lumps got in the way (BME vs h.e.n. being a key example), but for the most part, it's not that bad.

I have a device right in front of me that fits that description exactly. It's an OpenMoko FreeRunner. Their goal was to provide a bare-bones set of libraries to use the hardware, then hand it over to the community so they could "make it do what they wanted it to". You know where that went? In circles, really fast. It fragmented before it was released, honest. The internal team fragmented and started working on a new base AS the device was shipping. There are now 15 different distros for it, and none of them can't reliably pull off basic functions most people associate with feature phones, yet alone a smart phone. Hardware wise, the only delta between it and the N900 was a camera, a 3G chipset, and slightly faster CPU (A7 vs A8). Google it and check it out some time. Is that what you really want?

From the looks of the MeeGo bug list I'm looking at, all the hardware enablers aren't in place yet. Wifi is still flakey, accelerometers are still unhappy, and several other bits are still not right after months of trying. Yes, I'm happy to hear it's getting better more rapidly than a couple months ago. But again I ask, to what end?

What do you want it to do with your N900 that it can't do now with Maemo? Is re-inventing the wheel going to help that? What support do you expect to see when/if an actual supported platforms start coming into existence? You don't strike me as the type that want's "Angry Birds - Rio". And yet I don't really see anything in Maemo that's lacking that you'll be able to pull off with just a change of OS.

Wow... Way to lump everyone in. Your either for MeeGo, or a noob demanding things of developers? No middle ground possible? Way to get people interested in "joining your team".

And now we see the true colors... And why people are hostile toward MeeGo here.

I'm a developer and an end-user. I came in with a good understanding of what the gadget was. I was elated to have a device that was "80% done". I was able to hack it to do exactly what I wanted, and a few things I didn't even know I wanted it to do. Sure, I'd love to have had flash 10 support and a vector based GPS system with turn-by turn out of the box. But what's available now, and what we've created together here, is actually quite nice.

I too expect to have my N900 for a long time, probably at least another 3 to 4 years. I see it running Maemo for most of that time right now. I had my N6230 for 5 year before this one, and I still have tablets at home running Windows 98, chugging along happily. Far from being a "dead-end" platform, I see support for Maemo/N900 it all over the place. No, it's not from Nokia, but then I didn't expect a lot from Nokia. I was actually note expecting 1.3 at all, I figured we were done at 1.2.

The community of people (users and developers) we have here though is beyond what I'd hoped for, and something I want to protect. From my perspective, based on what you're saying above, you're looking to pilfer that community with the promise of a half-baked cookie that may some day be almost as good as what we have now. That's why some people here are so "hostile" toward MeeGo. They've seen this before, and watched it tear apart communities, leaving nobody a winner. I for one don't want that here, which is why I pose these questions, and why I'm reserved about how much people are advocating for it.


Anyway. I'm betting at this point we're not going to see eye to eye on this. You've made your goals pretty clear, and I applaud your directness in doing so. We both have a different view on what's important, and how long either platform has a chance on living on the N900.

And yes, again, I think it's great to have updates on MeeGo posting back into this community. Who knows, if your vision comes to fruition, maybe most of the community here will transition and move to MeeGo, with continued support and happy new widgets and what not. Of course in your opinion, that could be a bad thing, what with all the people showing up and demanding things, no?

Either way, I wish you luck in getting your community up and running, as well as getting the N900 stable under the new OS. My only hope is that your community doesn't come at the expense of this one, at least not any more than it already has.

Good luck!

Meego is entirely open, the entire source of the core OS is open (and I believe free). Hardware drivers are irrelevant, you don't hear people claiming linux is "not open" because it allows closed source drivers to exist and the same is true of meego.

A lack of understanding about what open/free means in terms of the OS is one of the many reasons people spread misinformation.

Based on the recent comments by the OP, I have to vote "no". Prior to these comments, I would have either voted "yes" or been indifferent.

While MeeGo has some roots in Maemo, the only real connection is a single piece of hardware that is capable of running multiple OS's. MeeGo information is only a quick google search away, and with a couple of bookmarks, a person could readily stay on top of it.

If the prevailing attitude is "MeeGo by developers for developers, common folk need not apply", then I'd prefer to not see information about it here. This type of attitude is why I chose not to participate in bug tracking.

IMHO, some of the best programs for the N900 were written by developers who actively engaged and encouraged feedback from the non-developers in the community. The interaction in threads about those programs contributed to quick development into a robust product that was easy to use.

If you'd prefer to limit the exposure of MeeGo DE (perhaps it should be DOE, developer only edition, as opposed to CE, community? edition) to mostly developers, you'd probably be better off if you didn't post information here where non-developers have easy access.

Since there is a forum for

maemo.org > Talk > OS / Platform > MeeGo / Harmattan

Answer has to be Yes. Simples.