I'd have to say no.
Nokia has 2 mobile OSs currently that they at least partially assist in developing. Android is one that others rely on Google to develop. Seems pretty different to me.
It's the potential for choice that matters.

Really, so they don't want to allow others to use the OS on their phones, cars, netbooks etc?

You're misconstruing the conversation.

Now see... THIS is the kind of statement that should be coming out more regularly. Sure, it may look bitter, but damn it's a ton better than silence.

I would agree... but it's another short-term solution under a different name using (parts) of Linux to ramp up the speed and familiarity of their offerings.

Google controls Android, true. But in the end, if you adopt MeeGo, it's not an internally derived solution either.

Regardless... I love this kind of **** talking. It tends to bring out the best/worst in their offerings.

Is it a foregone conclusion to you that MeeGo is a short-term solution? If so, what would need to be done to make it long-term? (and in the short product lifecycles we have these days I'm not even sure what those terms mean any more...)

It's not a foregone conclusion that it is indeed a short-term solution in total; however let's be honest. GM, BMW and the other auto manufacturers that are using it (for instance) would not have been able to deploy a custom, from the ground-up OS with a modular/changeable UI and a steady community to back it up in months or even years.

So yeah... it shortened the dev time considerably in that application.

And let's be honest, if Samsung hadn't released their Galaxy S series as well as their other Android based offerings... they would still be waiting for Bada to come out in full-swing and no new product being produced, shown or talked about and in people's hands yet.

So... yet another short-term solution, imho.

To make MeeGo into a long-term solution, I'd have to say the underpinnings are their. Intel/Nokia is still superceded (I'm assuming here) by the Linux Foundation and ultimately it's a "distro" that means it is accessible by the public. But how that will work out from theory to actual deployment... we've yet to see. All other embedded systems have had bottlenecks in terms of control.

We'll see...

Ok, gerbick, I think we're using "short-term solution" very differently. In my (engineering) experience it translates to "workaround", "stopgap", etc. You seem to be using it to mean "FAST solution".

Technically anything Linux-based is fairly future-proof, making it long-term (by my understanding of the term).

Ah. No, not a stopgap measure - even Samsung's Android move wasn't really "stopgap" because they've expanded it from niche product to full-featured line.

If Nokia went to Android, that would be a stopgap measure - if MeeGo is delayed, for instance.

I tend to use stopgap (think: duct tape) totally different than short-term (think: catalyst) due to how I've historically used frameworks to expedite my projects. Stopgap would have been to hard code all of the data (which... been there, done that too).

I would agree that anything based on Linux is somewhat future-proof... but Maemo 4.1 and Maemo 5 with their closed bits seem to be real dead ends. Thanks to Nokia, I now start to doubt that prior assumed truth that Linux based meant truly open-ended futures.

No, its the future. A stable linux core constantly under development that accept any UI you put on it. Symbian^3 is the same thing, but more efficient, and therefore better suited for phones.