On July 1, 2011, Maemo stands at an interesting crossroads.* In June, Nokia formally announced the N9 Harmattan mobile phone mentioned in Council's previous posting.* Although the stage for the announcement of the device was somewhat awkward, being amongst other marginally related news at the Nokia Connections event in Singapore, the device itself was well presented and showed off the design attributes of the N9 admirably.* A wealth of product information was promptly available online.* Reaction from the general press was positive as well and led to an upswing of anticipation for the phone, which is expected to be released in the next few months.

The device was described at the announcement as the result of Nokia's MeeGo project and is described in specifications as "MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan".* As widely expected, it has a Maemo base ("Harmattan") with a MeeGo API.* From the perspective of application developers and end users alike, the phone appears as a MeeGo handset although that technically may not be correct.* Nevertheless, notwithstanding the lack of technical compliance, the device is widely described as a MeeGo device and hoped to lift the profile of the MeeGo project.* Nokia also initiated much activity surrounding the device at www.meego.com, including threads in the MeeGo forum, to describe aspects of the device.* As first reported in the previous Council posting, the N9 has both a closed mode and an open (developer) mode.* Root access and terminal are available as well.* Nokia also announced the availability of a limited number of N950 developer devices in an attempt to increase the number of apps available for the N9 at launch.*

Nokia made no outreach to maemo.org during the N9 launch.* Although not formally reported as such, Nokia received an "exception" from the Linux Foundation for the N9 and is freely using the meego.com infrastructure to provide community support for the N9.* In addition, it was announced that OBS would include Harmattan as a target and that the community apps repository for MeeGo would include Harmattan apps.* While there is reason for increased optimisim for the future of MeeGo, the relationship between Maemo, Nokia and MeeGo is left somewhat out on a limb.* In an IRC meeting with maemo.org council, new Nokia liaison Matti Arias confirmed that all of Nokia's Maemo/MeeGo related ifs focused on promoting the N9.* Such promotion will not involve maemo.org.


The future of maemo.org is uncertain.* While there may be a new sub-forum for the N9/N950 devices, it is mainly for organizational purposes as maemo.org is unlikely to be the "home base" for the devices.* There are numerous directions in which the community may move.* For example, the Swipe UI/UX layer of the N9 is closed source and so there will be interest in developing an open source community alternative.* Alternatively, the community can simply continue on with support for previous versions of Maemo.* The staying power of maemo.org in the two year interim between the N900 and the N9 has been recognized even by Nokia. There are approximately 1 million downloads per week.**A minimal level of support will continue to be provided by Nokia for at least a year.* In keeping with its history of open governance, the community itself must decide the best direction forward.*



Link: Original article.

What's with all the *

i wonder what to gain out of all this ? for N900 minimum support or almost NO support ? anyway it makes me a little sad.So far ,N900 is far most perfect handset for me ,on the earth .

it is possible to put the source for all the "Community" applications on a different server, independent from NOKIA, should NOKIA decide to stop supporting TMO. or found the site by different means.
how about the firmwares (PR 1.3 aso.)?
there are of course enough copies available in the wild so that it they can be made available even if NOKIA stops providing them, but will there be legal hassle from NOKIA forbidding to make them available?
dito for the OVI programs for the N900 / Maemo;
will it be possible to get the .deb packages or @ least the source codes & continue to "distribute" them even if NOKIA discontinues the Maemo part of OVI?

at least a year oh boy.

we have a few projects like cssu, open media player and the other apps that are in the works.

you are right , really my next mobile will be Samsung or HTC what ever happen

This doesn't sound all that bad to me...
Merely sounds as though meego is becoming the new maemo.
And during that transition maemo will still be supported by Nokia.
Nothing terribly surprising there....

I hope maemo is able to survive in it's own right for the long haul though.
It may be able to contribute an interesting thing or 2 to the meego project & vica-versa
So long as there's not any unnecessary duplication of efforts, it can still remain relevant.

Won't the maemo 'banner' end with the n900?
Will there be any effort to port maemo to any other devices?

If not, I think it makes more sense to revert the forum back to its previous form (ITT) and have a maemo subcommunity within it to support maemo.

I suspect we'll have some bits(hildon-desktop/status-menu) ported to MeeGo and other systems. Mainly because it's lightyears ahead of everyone else, IMHO.
Most will probably want a MeeGo compatible core, for apps compatiblity.
The other contender to look at will be Kubuntu Mobile. It'd be Debian-based, use QT... and might just be the logical progression of Maemo, depending. It'll probably never come stock on any device, though.

Ironically, I thought I would leave before Maemo would ever leave us, given the way I've been moving further away ever since the move away from INTERNET TABLET TALK over to yet-another ME TOO cell phone and the talk.MAEMO.org branding over the years but I guess I might be wrong. Stupid, Nokia. Numerous stupid missed opportunities and profoundly obnoxious, rancid decisions by an odious crew of executives. Simply appalling. (And yes, it bears repeating because it doesn't appear that it sinks in sometimes.) Been nice knowing some of you and hanging around--especially during the ITT days with my N800. :P