History repeating itself again.

A device is released, Nokia (relatively*) quickly stops supporting it, people complain, Nokia says the next iteration OS will end world hunger and that of course it won't run on the current device. People complain.

Someone points to some project that is trying to create a new OS based on the newest versions of the open components of Maemo. Thus, it "might" be able to present a community alternative to a Nokia-sanctioned OS upgrade that will never materialize. Nokia quickly points every current device owner demanding an upgrade to this new project. People believe the hype, even though the new project's state is "not ready for daily usage".

Someone realizes that the project has been in such an state for months, gets the hint that this might go on forever, and decides to rant about it on tmo. People complain.

Some just want [to play some random codec file/be able to use the device without X application freezing/fix Y bug/get new version of Z core component]. Some other people just want to be able to run whatever commercial applications will be released for the next device (a new version of OviMaps, games...). The new project only partially gives them this, but it also gives tons of new bugs and unwanted changes.

Some people dualboot the new project and are happy with it. The rest, either try start to fix stuff by themselves, move on to another platform, or just are happy with what they have now. There's a feeling of "we have been ripped of" floating around TMO. Every often a new thread pops up pointing this. Nearly the same set of people ask, rant, answer, and/or basically repeat the same that has been said since the 770, with few exceptions.

Rumours of a new device suddenly start spreading like crazy. We even joke that what developers need to stop the general uneasiness on the community is a new device, since it's been so long since the last one. The new device quickly becomes the center of everything, conversations on IRC, ideas on what to do with/for it, will my applications work on it, what does the SDK contain. Some people say that they will keep on releasing stuff for the older device but eventually stop doing it because [the older device doesn't have übercool component X version Y and porting it is costly|the older device doesn't have hardware Z and emulating it breaks the game, the interface, etc.].

A device is released. Nokia quickly stops supporting it. People complain.

Like the ones I can install on my N8x0!

*As a a person with a Palm background, before its WebOS revolution, Palm used to stop supporting a product the day it was released. So even the months of support Nokia gives look like a win

A while back after discussing this with DocScrutenizer, I filed this feature request, but never heard anything back about it, maybe we can use this as a first attempt?

http://bugs.meego.com/show_bug.cgi?id=9700

According to what Quim told me during the conference, we probably need to first mail -dev and ask for feedback on this, and when there's no response, email the product manager (think "escalation policy") but maybe through the council this could be better handled ?

So, going over this thread (and I do apologize for not being up-to-date with the forums) I will point out what was explained to me by Quim wrt to escalation policy. He agreed it should be documented, and that it might be lacking in communication and it is my fault (I had a milliard other things to do before, in and after the conf unrelated to this) for not sending this earlier as I promised to do so, the "escalation" policy in brief is as follows:
1) File a bug / FEA into bugs.{maemo/meego}.com
2) Wait for like a week or so before you get a response.
3) If response was not received, mail the corresponding mailing list with a feedback request pointing the bug URL. (for example, it is is architectural business, meego-architecture).
4) if this did not work, contact (-mail) the product manager, I'm guessing this is the person assigned on the bug report, but can please somebody confirm that?

Most of this long thread has been originated by this piece of sentence:

No new ideas that I'm aware of. I was not in the meeting so I don't know in which context that was said.

Also let me remind you that there are only five items currently open in the licensing change requests queue. The rest was discussed, explained and resolved a long ago. You can analyze the impact these open requests have over the Maemo/N900 user base.

So, about https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10125

Do we just have to keep bumping bugs till they're confirmed or WONTFIX'd, or are we back at square one again?

Hostmode should benefit from it.

I can see different reasons one could desire a package be opened:

a) Because it's just plainly required to get the N900 working with anything other (including Meego) than stock Fremantle
b) Because it would help development of a saner alternative that would work on other platforms (ex. document cal area, open mce, bme, etc.)
c) Because it is under documented and someone wants to use it
d) Because the component has a bug that Nokia has refused to fix and a person thinks he's able to fix it.
e) Because the component has a pending feature request that Nokia has refused to implement and a person thinks he would be able to add the feature.
f) Because someone thinks the component is useful for something outside of the Maemo/Meego/Maemo devices scope and wants to maintain it
g) For the sake of it.

(Difference between a and b is that a could be satisfied by just a proprietary but freely re-distributable solution. problem b cannot, because the nokia binary would be incompatible with random distro, etc.).
(c d and e are indeed similar).
(f is e but with a much larger scope -- not only fix a few nuisances but potentially make it a gnome component or something).

Now -- media player would be an example of (e) (and potentially (d)). According to what's been said, what incentive might Nokia have for releasing Media Player? None whatsoever. So I understand that releasing it is a difficult decision for Nokia.

But releasing an entirely new, different Music Player source, albeit praiseworthy, does probably not answer what the requester had in mind.

That sentence pretty much sums it all - five years of ITT + TMO rants. We have countless media players, twitter apps and console emulators, but only just one calendar a normal human can use. It's just too bad there is no way to tell it you DON'T want alarms in events by default, though : that is something someone would have fixed by now, if source was available...

How true and well summarized :-)

Only newcomers may claim surprise though, as it's always been that way since the 770 in 2005, four devices gone to waste already.

Anyone willing to bet N9/Harmattan will be any different ?

This is 100% personal opinion of course (and current only up to PR1.1), but I didn't find it fit for purpose. Buggy in various showstopper ways (eg producing invalid icalendar output, or events moving around with TZ/DST changes) and I couldn't get it to sync with anything I found useful.

Dates (from what was later called Pimlico) did show a lot of promise, especially UI-wise. Too bad it conflicted with rtcomm and had to go :-(

Nine actually, your query didn't include ones with ASSIGNED status (one of which happens to be the #1 by votes in the bugjar) :-)