I bought the N810 in sep 2008 and since then I got two updates (36-5 and 43-7 and since then no more. Are there no software updates anymore ?

Hi skatebiker,

as the beta SDK of maemo 5 is already available I wouldn't expect any bigger updates for diablo anymore

Cheers Daniel

There've been some discussions on maemo-developers about how the community could push an SSU out. It wouldn't quite be seamless, but input is welcome.

Sounds a bit like the fedora legacy repos of yore, I like :-) It doesn't even have to be "SSU". Simply pushing updated packages as and when we have fixes (and there are many bugs tagged "patch" already) should be fine.

Except that if Nokia ever do publish another SSU of their own there will be some very interesting.cn times.

It is a bit of a sensitive issue, but at this point it would probably be more productive if we had official confirmation that Diablo updates are over. Could the council pursue this perhaps?

I'm fine if Nokia wants to hand over Diablo updates and patches to the community. Since Diablo's life is over, and any further development on the n8xx line is done, they may as well leave updates to the enthusiast community to handle from here on out so the device doesn't die young and leave the community bitter. That's one of the quickest ways to kill the chance of success for future products. Palm's already learning that with their screwup over the Pre. They had success on a silver platter, but when they killed the user community early and brutally, all hope of the Pre going anywhere died with it all thanks to one boneheaded maneuver.

Nokia would be wise to take the lesson of Palm's mistake and actually nurture the community. As has been repeatedly proven, a healthy, loyal community is the most guaranteed way to sell a product in large quantities. Kill that community or make them bitter is a guaranteed recipe for failure. A bitter community spells epic fail.

Trust me, I've been in the tech world long enough to see this cycle repeated over and over and over again. It's almost 100% guaranteed to happen every time with few exceptions.

It simply won't happen. Instead of Diablo to play with/update/maintain, the community got Mer.

And I don't even know how that fits in the picture yet. But Nokia will not give the community Diablo.

And I truly want to be 100% wrong. No updates since Dec. 2008 for the OS, Dec. 2007 for Skype... I'm beyond disappointed. Even if the next version of the NIT is a commercial success, it will be less one sell - mine.

Yeah, and that would play right into my "bitter community = lost sales" thing. So what if someone has an older device. Don't leave them high and dry, because if you do, they will be highly unlikely to buy a new device, no matter how nice it is. They'll go elsewhere. Just support the old one until it dies, then cash in when said user buys a new one along the way as the old one is slowly coming to its end. It's not that hard. But the problem is, too many companies have adopted the "throw away" mentality. They expect you to throw away your old toy when the shiny new one comes on the market. Uh, it don't work that way, and companies need to start realizing that. Heck, I've got 3 generations of mp3 players here, the shiny new one, the middle aged one, and the dinosaur each serve their own separate purposes, and each will likely stay in my collection until each dies. But that won't stop me from replacing it with a new one either. Now if they cut off support for the older device prematurely, then I'll definately pick up feet and go elsewhere when the dinosaur dies.

Just because said company has a shiny new toy, if they won't support the older one for a reasonable period of time, what reason do I have to stick with them when I buy my next new device? None. If they can't guarantee long term support, then that just says to me that I'm a cash cow and I mean nothing to them except the profits they can make off me. And if that's the case, I refuse to give them my money. They'll have to get it from some other poor sap.

And all companies, not just Nokia, need to realize that this is true not just with me, but millions of other people as well. It just falls in line with the simple rule of business: Take care of your customers first, your employees second, and everything else will take care of itself. Every company who's applied that principle has succeeded. The only exceptions are those companies who have made bad choices and marketed something nobody wanted. Otherwise, it's got a 100% success rate.

Complete nightmare. Imagine if a community patch killed a device. Who would the consumer go to? maemo.org or Nokia customer services?

I rely on the community too. Currently there is no real replacement for the N810, not the N97, not the N900. All new devices are not mature enough within a year of their release, I already see this with the 5800 phone which is not really finished. The iPhone 3G has the same problem. I have both the 5800 and N810, of which the latter was more mature at my purchase time (Sep 2008) than the 5800 now.
There is some similarity with the HP41 community in the early 1980s which was a special unique calculator.

nokia would pay for a community complaintmaster.