Well, call me a cynic, but I can't bring myself to believe in this right now.

One, I have seen too many fanfare announcements of partnerships between industry heavyweights over the years, just to see them get bogged down by corporate ego and infighting, and dive to oblivion with a whimper.

Two, from the outside this looks like a sellout on Nokia's part. They contribute Qt and the UI, Intel gets the rest (OS, infrastructure and governance). And I have much less faith in Intel's capacity to "get things right" than Nokia's... CPU neutrality ? Persistence ? Totally, 100% open source ? Wait 'n see...

Three, I don't believe in two unfinished parts making a complete whole. I'm on my fourth generation of Maemo devices: three of them have spent their usable lifespan as innovative hardware grossly underused by buggy and incomplete software. Looks like the fourth is going to follow suit now. And the fifth will likely run a beta of a mongrel with DNA from Moblin, which has always failed to impress me...

This could be the start of something great. Or it could be the end of this community as it evolved over the past four years.

Just read through 20 pages and I would certainly say I will not dump my N900 for this, I have a really strong feeling MeeGo will get ported to the N900 !! Qt 4.6 and this is simply a boost to the Maemo community !!

I'm excited about this ....can't wait to see how things unfold !!

Cheers
Jackie

@TA-t3

I wouldn't count on that. :-)

I pronounce it Nok-ia and I'm in the US.

Nokia: "Ooh something shiny!"

Don't expect any more n900 development, they want to sell you hardware, not keep your n(curVersion-100) working (or fix the bugs)

"WONTFIX: Fixed in MeeGo" is the new "WONTFIX: Fixed in Fremantle"

This is really interesting news, it goes much further than simply the next OS for a Nokia flagship. Google challeneged Nokia by stepping on their turf with Android, now Nokia + Intel have blown away any reason Chrome OS had to exist.
For example if in the future I have to choose between a Meego netbook and a Chrome OS system with its obsession for keeping all my data on the "cloud", then it really is no choice, when they are both "free".

Damn, I wanted to do that one, foiled again ! :-)

edit: actually you got it wrong, so I still get dibs:

"WONTFIX: Fixed in MeeGo" is the new "WONTFIX: Fixed in Harmattan" :-)

I think the bit that worries me most about this is the effect on the community.

The device is... a device. the definition of 'obsolete' in technology is 'ten minutes after you opened the box' so I didn't expect the n900 to have updates forever. It will still work!

But the community here is something that has become very important to me, and I'm concerned that this will impact it in unhelpful ways. A quick look at the the comparisons set out by Qgil here suggests that Maemo has a much more active, communicative volunteer community, comprising not only developers and technical people but enthusiasts and end-users (like me).

I find myself asking things like "why were we allowed to go on discussion a maemo.org mascot when people must have known maemo had a limited shelf life?" (I won't mention that I'm knitting an obsolete scarf!) which is something about this being sprung on a good community without any warning. Then there's "What will happen to the council?" - will the community still need dedicated representatives to cement the bond between professionals and volunteers? What shape will the community have? Will end-users still be wanted around here?

And what will become of t.m.o.? Moblin has nothing remotely like it - will it too become obsolete?

A lot of people have put a great deal of effort into building a community here, including council members past and present. I don't want to see all that good work lost in some Grand Scheme.

Of course, that all sounds very negative. I'm not. I'm just airing my anxieties to make sure that some of the best bits of maemo.org (of which the comunty is one, IMNSHO) don't get lost in the marriage.

Edit - on a personal note, I dislike the name. Smacks of the worst sort of egocentricity. I rather hope the Open Source sommunity is about something other than Me and My Ego.

If it's going Fedora-based, RPM-based? Ditching the Debian origin? Oh yes, I'll be out of here then. There would be nothing left for me here, I moved _away_ from that kind of packaging and OS for a reason.

I think what we can expect here is a tablet from nokia running on intel's architecture with MeeGo OS.

And the apps' will be plentiful since it's all based on QT.. This is very good news. Having multiple os's with a single framework is the way to go. Android and Iphone OS will essentially be left in the dark or at least limited to only a few device types i.e. phone, mid's etc.