MWKN Weekly News: 4 February 2013


The four wheels spinning MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan

Eighteen months ago, following the launch of the N9, Quim Gil posted his thoughts that even if the N9 was the "only MeeGo device from Nokia", the future wasn't all dead: the Linux kernel, Qt, WebKit and a "swipe" UX are At the time, he was (almost certainly) talking about the skunkworks Meltemi project. Which was subsequently killed by Nokia.

However, his point stands, this week we've seen the launch of BlackBerry 10 (Qt, WebKit and a swipe UX) and the start of community involvement in Ubuntu Phone (Linux, Qt, WebKit and a swipe UX, and even Debian packaging!).

Jolla (again, all four technologies) is also going to be released this year, and is even more intimately tied to the Maemo heritage, with many involved community alumi and a direct path from the investment in MeeGo, through Mer and Nemomobile.

Although Nokia is irrelevant to those wanting open computing devices, 2013 is promising to be an interesting year.


2012 in review

MWKN is now three years old, and - it's not been three years without challenge. However, here's a look back on the last twelve months:

• February: reverse engineering WhatsApp; PR1.2 for N9 - brings Google Talk video calling;
• March: Flash available for N9; Inception provides "jailbreak" without open mode; Reuters confirms existence of Meltemi; alpha version of Nitdroid for N9; council election period started;
• April: council election period extended; Quim Gil dampens suggestions of a "sudden switchoff" of maemo.org as he becomes the community manager at Nokia again; forum<->email bridge for offline TMO collaboration; "independence" discussions grind on; Cordia releases alpha version of Hildon Desktop stack for Mer;
• May: cock-ups prevent council election starting on time; first (and last?) Tizen Conference held in San Francisco; Nokia aims to give away 100 devices as part of Summer 2012 Device Program; maemo.org and Nokia 770 turn seven; new council elected; MeeCoLay lets Harmattan apps run on Fremantle;
• June: last hopes of more Linux, Qt, WebKit and swipe devices from Nokia dashed as Meltemi canned;
• July: discussions properly start on having a "maemo.org" legal entity and migrating to community infrastructure; Jolla goes public; Nokia N9 PR1.3 rolls out; Jonathan Wilson launches string of open source Fremantle component replacements;
• August: Nokia sells Qt to Digia; Tizen's first birthday; libhybris allows reuse of Android binary drivers; concrete proposals for "Hildon Foundation"; Thumb2 build of Fremantle CSSU;
• September: Quim Gil leaves Nokia to join Wikimedia Foundation; details of 2009 Harmattan and keyboarded N9 devices emerge; elections for council and board start; Nokia "fake" Lumia 920 adverts;
• October: council nomination period re-opened; Jolla launch "Sailfish" moniker; Samsung to merge Bada and Tizen; first Hildon Foundation board elected;
• November: council elected; Jolla reveal UI and strategy; maemo.org infrastructure starts moving to community control;

It's been a year of change so it's far too uncertain to predict what the open device landscape will be like in another year. However, if you want to get involved in covering it, all you have to is tweet @mwkn. Your editor, Ryan Abel and Andrew Olmsted want to thank all those who have submitted news and a Ryan and Andrew especially for their committment to ensuring the issues of MWKN go to 'press' each week.



In this edition...

1. Front Page
   • The four wheels spinning MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan
   • 2012 in review
2. Applications
   • Nokia N9: first phone in the world to run IPython 0.13.1 with Notebook & Qt console interfaces
3. Community
   • Minutes for Hildon Foundation board meeting on 26th January
4. In the Wild
   • Development of Ubuntu Phone's 12 "core apps" starts with community volunteers
   • BlackBerry launch new phones with Qt-/swipe-based user interfaces