There is a way, which is to integrate a platform made mostly of open source. The first Fremantle SDK will be 100% open source (missing some components and features certainly, but being functional and buildable).

Didn't Android run on the N810 before the G1 was launched? It's a similar story.

But it's good to have the expectations right. What your friend has probably in mind is a full fledged Maemo 5 SDK with the final look&feel and all the Nokia apps available under emulation. Something that would provide the code to hack a full Maemo 5 image with applications and etc. This is not the point of the SDK and this is not going to happen - at least not in the release we are preparing right now.

This first Fremantle SDK release is going to be a rough shot of fresh code targetting mainly platform developers. The API won't be complete, leave alone frozen, so not even application developers will find much real use of it. Power/general users will be able to do very little with this SDK, apart from reading what (we hope) the most advanced developers will interpret and write about.

This might deceive some of you willing to have Maemo 5 in your hands, but this is how open development works.

thanks quim,

Seeing how it is shaping up will allow people to get ideas together.
Knowing where abouts and how clutter will sit will allow us to formulate ideas.

Since clutter already runs on other machines it should then be possible to test and start to build plans.

Hoorah! I like the words "on schedule".

Something Pandora pre-orders would be happy to hear, too. But alas...

surely THIS is the most interesting part? These guys have 'the new hardware' in their hands. That's n900 or whatever it's going to be called, isn't it?

Well, they've got something. Whether or not it looks anything like what we'll eventually be able to buy is another story. It may just look like a green board with chips on it, with wires trailing around and (maybe) a screen held on by rubber bands and a blob of chewing gum.

But hey, less than 5 weeks left in the year! So the Alpha SDK comes out in < 5 weeks!

Hmmm... that phase was about 1 year ago...

EDITED: Removed due to Nokia request. I wasn't aware this information was considered sensitive.

Wow, now I'm suddenly a lot more excited. The way they were talking at the Summit, it felt like they were still at the breadboard stage, but I'm just going to believe that Mara is right, because that's really cool.

I wonder how long it'll take until we see the first blurry images showing up on engadget. I always loved that "leaked pictures"-phase.

Pictures, Mara? =)

im guessing that mara is on the edge of a NDA breach already, so dont get your hopes up.