Yeah. MeeGo is the future.
Ie. I tried rebuilding MeeGo disk image today and this wonderful piece of python code called mic2 crashed on me, without any hints of what might be wrong.
Nice set of tools you have there...

Well, that's something I'm trying to do... at least for the "Harmattan" MeeGo.

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My personal opinion of what is currently wrong is that we currently have three mostly divergent (there's always exceptions!) communities.

- Mostly represented here we have the old and "Nokia-deprecated" Maemo community. It is the biggest one by far because there's actual, released devices involved.
- Mostly represented on the MeeGo MLs we have the "new" MeeGo community and the one we're supposed to "move into". But as it is now all I can get from MeeGo is a set of make-your-own-distro tools. Which are much better than Maemo's and fully OSS, but why would I be interested in them?
- And then, what should have been the main focus for quite a lot of people as it's what's going to be the visible part of the future Nokia device -- the Harmattan/DUI/MeegoTouch development community -- is quietly hidden under Gitorious, blogs and/or behind Nokia doors, and few people are monitoring it. Why? Why? It is THERE where I can sometimes smell the awful odour of closed source components approaching (but fortunately the picture seems generally better). And -- you're looking for the N900+1 GUI? It's right there in front of your eyes. Hint hint! Stop looking at MeeGo Netbook/Moblin screenshots.

And the sad truth is that so far instead of getting everything and everybody happily "merged" like Maemo mostly was we're distancing ourselves even more. And this won't look good. It will look like Android vs HTC. Does HTC care about being open? No, they just point fingers to Android and say "hey! we use that open stuff! we're open! buy our devices!" then laugh at you if you ask for the source of the crap they put on top the Android stack on their devices, and they will kick you if you ask where to file nasty hardware bugs. "Talking with the actual engineers behind the device? Madness! This it HTC!"

Haven't you already heard that sentence here? Some statements I've been reading lately have already felt to me like "hey! we use that open meego stuff! the N900+1 will be open!" "what about the notepad (or dial, or messages, or ...) application?" "closed! differentiation! but meego is open so go grab their generic Qt mail reader application that won't even integrate with the system theme because virtually no shipped device uses it. it's open! see -- here's the meego bugzilla, here's its repository, here's ..."


The other day I was reading a KDE guy blog and found that "MeeGo" was going to use some parts of the KDE calendar application. Which MeeGo was that guy talking about? Was he talking about the meego.com MeeGo? Was he talking about the Harmattan MeeGo? Fortunately, I googled a bit and found the answer (http://maemo.gitorious.org/extendedkcal/extendedkcal aka Harmattan) but the very fact that I had to ask this question made me think. Since then I've asked myself similar questions lots of times.


So, why are you expecting us to move "to MeeGo", considering the next device is still pretty much Harmattan?
See, when I arrived here, I had Joe Average's "make the most of the CURRENT DEVICE I OWN" mentality. Advancing to the "make the most of the NEXT device" mentality IS hard enough already, but I admit it has lots of benefits. And now we have to move to a "Make the most of the SECOND NEXT device" chain of thought? Talk about big ships turning around!

It still amazes me when users talk about Qt like if it had been this "device generation"'s decision. Guess again! The Qt-craze is happening right now because the NEXT device is the one that is all about the Qt-craze, and of course, it has nothing to do with the software the device you have in your hands right now runs, which is pretty much Gtk+ based. The MeeGo-craze device will be the next one after the Qt one. 2012? 2013?


Hopefully we'll see MeeGo as a true unifying layer by then. So far, I see no need to merge any communities as all this will cause is damage, and more confusion.
I can already envision asking a GUI development question on the meego-devel mailing list and getting two perfectly valid answers, one for "MeeGoMoblin" -- "link with libmoblinpanel.so" and the other one for "MeeGoHarmattan" -- "dbus-send org.meego.xxxx ... ".

Or was it "libmeegopanel" and "org.maemo.dui.xxxx"? I can't really remember. It has been so hard to cope with the _massive_ renaming done by both parties!

Very good analogy found.
Looks like Nokia is in fact learning something from the competitors.

In the HTC's case, the explanation is probably way simpler: their developers do not speak English. I doubt Nokia can claim the same =)

Oh they do. At least the ones I had talked to. Some even better than me ;P

I see I have not been that far off the mark in my blog post abot Harmattan being no man’s land between Maemo and MeeGo three months ago And yes, the naming issue is becoming painfully apparent, too. There will be strategic choices to be made, some are happening right now, and some have already been made.

I was puzzled to see, for example community managers with attitude of "I think it's important to separate end users of the open source project from the end users of vendors who purchase a device from that vendor". How are you going to build a community when you’re distancing yourself from people who are the only ones to give you feedback and crucial for an OSS community needs to thrive ? In essence, there is (and will) be no single MeeGo community to transition to, there is meego.com, for which you need a developer badge to enter, and the rest of you will be shooed away into specific manufacturer forums (say goodbye to user-developer synergy or not reinventing the wheel on issues common to all MeeGo devices). Not a thrilling prospect from an OSS perspective.

As for the naming. Please, when changing the provisional name - please do not use the sintagm "based on MeeGo". If marketing twists your arm and you absolutely have to include MeeGo in the name, do it in a way that will make the relation to it clear (i.e. based on MeeGo is fairly misleading as Harmattan is not based on MeeGo, it’s more of Qt/OBS lowest common denominator relation).

Last, but not least, make a Harmattan -> MeeGo transition strategy. Wrap it in candy paper if you have to (guaranteed upgrade to MeeGo 1.2 !) but if you want to leverage the MeeGo brand by hiding Maemo roots, the hard work of getting MeeGo onto the N9 (hardware adaptation project and all) will also be have hidden in order not to create a Harmattan-is-a-MeeGo-bait-and-switch impression. The GOOD aspect is that at least people from the community can see this, and suggest changes before things get to an ad acta state - we might seem a nuisance and sound acid at times, but that is because we want it to succeed.

This is exactly what puzzles me about *community* within meego.com. From what I can see, it has a very different meaning than on maemo.org.

In maemo.org the community consisted of both Nokia employees/subcontractors and everyone else (while the control of the 'product' was in the hands of Nokia, causing a vendor-user relationship).

In MeeGo, community is everyone with a 'commit bit' or role for the 'product' + everybody else who is contributing to the product + the users of the product. Even opinion and discussion is contribution to the project.

'Everybody else' can turn into having a commit bit or role if their merit warrants it.

Hence, MeeGo is more of a committer-contributor-user community.

EDIT: Important note though: It isn't all about code. Even helping the ecosystem around committers/contributors and managing this would be contribution. Kind of like HR or personell organisations. There is a fair more organisation in the 'MeeGo' community, including managers etc - see it as a virtual company where you're part of the work to bring out the product.

I guess this simply means that the InternetTabletTalk will have to be resurrected again, this time to provide a manufacturer-free forum that welcomes all kinds of people, not just ones with the "commit bit".

But how do you relate to clients/users if you shut them out of your own forums/MLs ? How do you consider them part of the MeeGo community if they have no channels interacting with the other 'categories' ? Where is the bridge between a Nokia XYZ enthusiast forum and meego.com ?