So what’s with Maemo6? Maemo6 will be MeeGo compatible.....consider Maemo6 already a MeeGo instance.

One of the reasons I bought the n900 was because it is open source and runs linux.

I am really happy with my n900 and it will have years of use.

However, I think Nokia has underestimated how popular the n900 had become and probably having trouble allocating resources to support this device. Especially while they are developing the next version of Maemo.

Their best bet is to continue with Maemo 6 and maybe scale-down the amount of changes to the platform. They can still release another Maemo-based device & make sure it is compatible with new MeeGo.

Ideally make Maemo-6 available for the n900.

Today's developers can write software on the n900 that should be binary compatible with Maemo-6 (ideally MeeGo too). When MeeGo is ready developers have an easy upgrade path for thier applications and the application pool should grow.
Then Nokia will start to have a healthy application catalogue and become a serious competitor to Android and iPhone.

The MeeGo development must of kicked-off months ago - I don't think this happened overnight. Nokia should have had an idea where they are going with Maemo and develop it towards MeeGo.

Of course, all this is speculation and may never happen and possibly the n900 will be abandoned.

But you know what? That's entirely up to Nokia and fine by me.

The n900 and it's software is open-source. I'm not tied to one vender hoping the software will be upgraded - we have the community to help with that.

The Mer project is shaping-up pretty well, moblin/MeeGo is open source or maybe someone will install a custom-version of some other linux distrobution.

The n900 is an open source device (apart from a few exceptions e.g. phone) and means it will have a long useful life ahead of it - I don't need to rely on the support of a corporation to develop for it.

I'm not locked-in to anybody.

It used to bother me that Nokia were going to exclude the n900 in official supoort for Maemo 6 and the lack of the free version of OVI maps that's fine. The community are developing alternate mapping applications and there is active development of Mer.

So, if things go well with the merge of Maemo and Moblin then great we reap the benefits of that.

If Nokia & Intel somehow mess things up (e.g. Intel commits Nokia to Moblin then Intel walk away with thier own idea - a tactic much used by Microsoft) we still reap the benefits because the community steps in.

It will be interesting to see what develops.

In all honesty, the parts of the project that have been decided without public discussion are the kind of things that would not be discussed publicly anyway by the Maemo or Moblin teams alone. Maemo didn't discuss the move to Qt and Moblin didn't discuss the move to rpm, to give a couple of examples.

What has been left basically untouched to be discussed publicly are most of the community aspects, the ones that were not required to be decided prior to the launch today. These are actually the points that have a direct an immediate impact in the maemo community, and I'm a but surprised that haven't been mentioned yet.

Talk? Council? Karma? Brainstorm? Transifex? GForge? Documentation process?.... (long etc)

See http://wiki.meego.com/Maemo_and_Moblin_community_assets

A quick comment since this obviously also affects the Mer project. MeeGo seems to satisify all of the hopes I had when I wrote the original Maemo Reconstructed proposal.

It has a proper governance, it has structure, entry ways for developers to participate, proper development environments, it's fully open source (I think there's exceptions with HW support) and many other positive things. It is completely new land and we have a very good ability to participate in the process. Best way is not to complain but to join and help shape the future.

If you have been interested in Mer and contributing to it, I would like to say that I will recommend you to participate in the MeeGo project. This does not mean Mer will shut down, but we will be helping out with Fremantle and Harmattan afterlife. If there's no indications of MeeGo on N900, this would obviously be an area that Mer would be helping out in - to get N900 support added to the platform.

There is one thing, which qgil also mentioned: Remember the (few for now) companies that wanted to test the maemo platform in order to find out if there can be profit for them (angry birds, hoop-frenzy, etc..)? They are not sure about maemo right now.

Now, enter the mind of some of them: If they write something for meego it will run on mobiles, tables and TVs (!). Imagine TV users buying programs! All sort of people! Now, that's a *big* and *new* market!

So yeah... 2010 will be fun :-)

p.s. This may also extend N900's lifetime since (most probably) the next device will be delayed because of the merge.

This might just be the kick Nokia needs to release an Ovi suite for Linux.

Maluka for president...

i dunno what to do know? shall i sell my n900 and wait for these new devices i dont want my n900 to be forgotten!

How long before the N910 or N1000 is released?? Very soon I guess..By September, Just in time for Nokia's convention. I heard somewhere on engadget about the convention delivering very big news on hardware

"maemo" running @ x86 isn't big hw news?