Originally Posted by christexaport

Well there is one more Maemo device in the Asian market made by Optima, but its not released yet.
http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/04/o...-video-priced/

Originally Posted by ysss

- android... well I have the G1, but I don't use it enough to get the gist of it ;P Probably it's designed to be a middle-of-the-road kind of mobile OS: jack of all trades, master of none.

Originally Posted by christexaport

Well there is one more Maemo device in the Asian market made by Optima, but its not released yet.
http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/04/o...-video-priced/

Originally Posted by christexaport

what's that supposed to mean, GA?

Originally Posted by johnkzin

Hm. I wonder what it takes to license Maemo (both in terms of agreements, and money) ... and which versions are available for licensing.

Originally Posted by christexaport

Explain, not just act crass and sarcastic, either.

Originally Posted by johnkzin

As far as I can tell, Android is designed to be a free common infrastructure (free/open OS and kernel, and then a common device independent application infrastructure) that phone makers can layer upon their devices. Essentially, it turns the mobile OS into a commodity, instead of a value component. IMO, the OS, kernel, and application infrastructure SHOULD be a commodity.

It's not meant to be "Linux/Unix in your pocket", in the traditional sense of Linux/Unix (and, iPhone OS X isn't meant to be this either; both platforms leverage Linux/Unix under the covers, but they aren't intending to reveal those layers to end users). Maemo does seem to be aimed that: full Linux/Unix in your pocket, even with an X based environment (and they do a great job of making X not suck -- no small feat). It's also leveraging that into something entirely new, but not in a way that conceals Linux/Unix from the expert user. A very good thing, IMO.

(and, obviously, there's a difference in how Android approaches the open-ness at the upper layers, but I wont re-visit that hot potato)

To me, the best platform would be a hybrid approach between Android and Maemo. Like Maemo: access to the traditional Linux/Unix layers, native hardware optimized applications, and leveraging as many open components as possible. But with a high level, hardware agnostic, application eco-system (Dalvik) that has a rich and growing central application conduit (the Market), as well as easily lending itself to secondary conduits. As for the UI, I'd probably take the look and polish of Maemo, but leverage some of the extras that Android brings to the table (automatic screen rotation, portrait and landscape keyboards, etc.).

You could do that by adding Linux things to Android (a full local terminal app, missing bin-utils stuff, a "me" account, an X layer that sits on top of the Android graphical environment, an rpm or deb package manager) ... or by adding Dalvik on top of Maemo (or Mer). I'm sort of agnostic about which approach is better ... there's trade-offs to either, and most of those trade-offs are likely to be dictated by an individual's biases. But, either one could work.

The problem with going with Android: a lot of work to make it into a useful Linux/X environment. And, not all of Android is fully "open and free" (though, at least one of the open android developers seem to be doing fine producing a workable platform without that open code).

The problem with going with Maemo: very small supported hardware selection. In this regard, Android is growing and spreading like kudzu. I don't expect to see Nokia put a lot of effort into making that happen, as opposed to Android.

The problem with going with Mer ... while I'm sure the team wants to fill in the gaps of Maemo wrt to supported hardware, and produce a platform that also doesn't have Android's gaps ... I don't see them having enough there, now/yet/soon, to make that kudzu like adoption rate happen.

And, in all of those cases, for me, the goal is a common commodity OS, kernel, and application environment, that is both flexible to the expert, and accessible/usable for the consumer.