Nothing stops them from still using binary drivers like every distribution can which won't help support of already binary platforms like the n900...

Also, looking at http://meego.com/about/licensing-policy it seems they're going the Android route of licensing, GPL at the bottom, BSD above (ie: vendor can go proprietary at the top, and will...). Or maybe I'm over reacting...

Anyway, I still think this is a incredibly great move, just a few comments to make it perfect ;-)

personal preference. i am an opensuse person rather than an debian/ubuntu user, so i am happiest using rpm oriented services such as Yast and zypper.

I like Kai's statement:

"We can look at the future of Maemo with no delays. This is like putting that development [environment] into steroids and making it faster in the future."

Although I would hope he said putting steroids into the development, and not the other way around.

hi togehter so at first i have no idea what i shall think about this hot news..

But i know that the Vibe in this Forum is very negative since the last weeks. How comes that you lough about the users you call " mainstream users that beliveing into the amazing n900 marketing pictures?" i was here since october last year. November i did my account here and buyed early my n900 for nokia.de for over 600 Eur nearly 815 $.

I know you will say hey in USA this device never did cost that much but here in germany it did.

I really was around this Forum also at the IRC Channel and so one. i have read many blogs and phonefreak forums all said yes boy buy that n900 its soo amazing.

And i guess nobody really can show me some Forum Threads that was actual this time where anybody said Stop dont buy the N900 its step 5 and they will bring a meamo6 - meego whatever out next year thats maybe not compatible with the n900..

So for the guys that crying out now you are a Troll iam not. I like open Source Projekts, iam not a Apple Fanboy, i know how a Bugzilla works and also did report Mameo5 Bugs couse i like my N900 but i really have to say it need still a lot of Development to be a really good Device.

best regards Crown

my point is Nokia are the manufacturer of the devices they stick there name on
Google are not that of the nexus its a HTC device so why is it not marketed as that.
its the equivalent of samsung making a device putting a nokia contributed OS on it lets say maemo5 and then marketing it as a Nokia

Exactly, you hammered that nail. I'm tickled pink. In the long run, this will be a Very Good Thing!

I suspect this is Nokia's way of offloading the sole responsibility for the OS, which is probably good in the long term. I am concerned about bug fixes for my n900 being kept up, and with continued compatibility with new stuff coming out.

But the N900 is not a computer that I can attach peripherals to--it is pretty static in its hardware. Unlike with a Linux distro such as Ubuntu, they don't have to keep up with the newest network interfaces and usb drives and such. But they do have to keep up with existing hardware issues like the front facing camera, and I can only hope that they will continue to do so.

But apps have always been the real weakness of this phone. Aside from Firefox, we are not seeing a maemo logo next to the iphone and windows logo on lots of mobile sites. If this new system is seen as having some sort of critical mass, it means that arm-based QT apps will be on the menu for developers. Especially if those apps can be done in a higher level language like Python that will make "porting" (by that I mean recompiling for a new processor) unneccesary. And that may include symbian phones.

In short: If Nokia pushes QT as the primary development system for MeeGo (and even if they don't) I suspect this will lead to MANY more apps available for the N900 than we currently see.

P.S. we have seen people running OSX, Windows 95, and Windows 98 on the N900. I predict that within days of the source code being posted, someone will have MeeGo ported to N900. Drivers for the cameras, accelerometer, phone, and GPS will be a question as to whether it is an experiment or an actual upgrade for the phone.

Anyone else noticed that the image on the meego site http://meego.com/ looks like a n900?

The MeeGo (ugh name...) webpage needs a BIG tab saying "Users", dedicated to explain why, as a user, is good and interesting to be in the platform. Right now, a common user just sees Maemo and the N900 fading away... just check the posts of this thread.

Once again, WE ARE NOT THE USERS! It is too late to get some marketing/PR people on the MeeGo team?

LOL, I noticed that and just tweeted about it, too. I was wondering if it was only me that noticed.. I hope its a N900...