I don't think you will have a problem with people enjoying their Maemo 5 devices; people are having a problem with the fact that 6 months after the release of a Maemo 5 phone, MeeGo was announced.

It took a couple of more months for Nokia to finally acknowledge - the day of the PR1.2 release in fact - that MeeGo will not be Nokia supported on the N900. Instead of the oft utilized "Name another company that has submitted as much code to the Linux Foundation as us..." spiel, or "What other cellphone company has supported their phone past one OS"... if you insist on calling it Maemo 6/Harmattan/MeeGo, then the question will continue to arise "Why isn't Nokia supporting this transition on such a young device?"...

Don't worry, I don't expect an answer.

But I just wanted to say that your answering method is a bit "out of touch" with the problem. People support Maemo, people support this community. And ultimately, people support Nokia and MeeGo. But for the folks that have gone from the halcyon days of ITT to TMO... now you're pushing them to MeeGo now? That's three moves in 3 years.

And that's just not acceptable.

Neither is having a phone that is supposed to be Nokia's most powerful offering to date not be upgradeable due to prior Nokia based decisions (resistive screen, chip/gpu, RAM, screen size, whatever) and there's no contingency plan to support, even for one iteration the newer OS, even if it meant it would be a dead-end fork. That would give folks enough time to continue their support of Maemo/MeeGo, give then time to come to grips with the new Qt and ultimately allow them the time to afford yet another $500 or so phone in just a year.

The last part... I doubt there's a plan to assist those that cannot afford that update, yet again is there?

To me, Nokia's biggest misstep besides communication is the fact that you've used this forum to gather experience and yet you've ditched, dumped and forgotten this place the moment MeeGo was announced and the decision to not officially support MeeGo on the N900 was made.

Resolve that last part and the community might not be as seemingly soon to dissolve as it is at this very moment. Ignore it or push it aside with cavalier verbiage like "You'll just keep enjoying your Maemo 5 device" and you'll conjure up a backlash that I'm quite sure you will invariably feel on a first month sales count when your more mainstream platform withers like SavaJe or OpenMoko.

This community does more than support you. It could be how you people stay in touch with reality. And right now, that's sorely needed because personally, I don't think you are.

Prove me wrong via actions and not empty rhetoric. Ciao.

I wonder, is Nokia really happy with the thought that large portions of the community that was built up around their devices will have the chance to continue to contribute to an OS that Nokia has a large stake in, and enjoy that OS on a LG, Samsung, etc device?

Is Nokia really OK with saying to its' current customers: "We realize you don't trust us/ aren't happy with us / etc, (we don't understand why) but please enjoy this shiny new OS on a competitors device."

Doesn't sound like a good business strategy to me. It does indicate the root of the problem though, Nokia isn't concerned about current customers.

Bottom line: Nokia needs to find an identity. Decide what flavor of organization it wants to be. Mostly open? Mostly closed?

Because right now I see a lot of mixed signals confusing the hell out of this community.

But it's good for the business.

My guess is they have learned their lesson from the best - politicians.

In my opinion this is not the place for cutting irony.
And I read posts like this from you several times this days...

I and the most people of this community want to buy also in 5 years Nokia devices with something similar to maemo. It's a great platform. And when they scare the community away and got bad reputation... who will continue to belive the N900 successor will be a real success?

Or will it only be a short term success and then die? Only to raise the Nokia stocks for several month until the management earned enought for their retirement?

Why should we then spent again money? To have the same trouble again? Or should we better consider to find a better system for the future?

Who of the people you gave at this community the advice: "Buy a other device. The N900 is not for you.", will come back when meego hits the store?
What is the point of that, smoku?
In my opinion your attitude is very harmful for the maemo / meego platform and especially Nokia.

Even if Meego is a success the people will have the choice. And I myself will think twice if there is a similar device with the same system from a other manufacturer. And this despite I have still not resigned.

>> In my opinion your attitude is very harmful for the maemo / meego platform and especially Nokia.

I think you dont get it.

It is NOKIA doing this, not the posters.

They reap what they sow. They have done this to themselves.

As consumers, our role is to buy other companies and not to buy Nokia if we are unhappy, staying with Nokia is counterproductive as they will take advantage and never change their ways.

I think "MeeGo" as a choice of name for its succesor is a misstep in itself. Sounds incredibly childish.

Two different things I believe.

As a company Nokia can be as closed as it and its stockholders want it to be.

It should have nothing to do with what OS it promotes.

One thing that troubles me with this premature post mortem of maemo.org if you will is what happened to:

If this was the case shouldn't we be embracing MeeGo and examining ways to continue Community support for Maemo?

I like where I think qwerty12 has been heading recently.

Personally I haven't even come close to reaching the end of my enjoyment of the N900. Not being able to send files to a network printer is my only real restriction and the final nut to crack.

I would have liked to have seen simple tools developed for Maemo that did not require the installation and maintenance of a different desktop OS for me in order to compile lightweight Web apps into distributable .deb files. Especially when those Web apps only consist of an icon, a desktop file, and maybe a css script.

I seem to have hundreds of these things now that I can not correctly share because of this. I'm sure others have plenty more and a collection of these could have been an equivalent response to 80% of what can be found in Apples store.

If WiFi was as prevalent as I hoped it would be by now, my N810 would have satisfy my needs and I would still be learning with it. Many members still do. And although I haven't heard from some of my favorites lately, we still have members just as passionate about their 770's...

What needs to be done in order for Maemo to be 100% community supported and how can we help to make it so?

I was talking about its identity there, not business practices.

Of course I would never expect that Nokia should divulge trade secrets or other items from which it derives competitive value.

But on the other hand, it needs to pick a default method of customer and especially community engagement. As I've said before, overall it's "start closed and maybe open a bit under pressure". I'd personally rather see it switch to "start open and make a solid business case for shutting up about this or that".

I'm still of the opinion that electing to run its devices on open source operating systems demands a change in the face Nokia presents to the world. But that is just an opinion.

Many of us have been putting tremendous opportunity into just that. Check Meego out some time; we the community are very active. Just like here, trying to continue community support for Maemo.

I think openness if great thing and opportunity for community support, but it can't fully replace company contribution, that's why i think the most thing i prefer over openness is support and the the knowledge of the developmnet ond future (kinda roadmap). and if Nokia don't want to do it, make the maemo and drivers fully open so community would do it.