Indeed: functionality, popularity and legalese are tied somehow.

We can get obsessed about this endless loop or we can forget about popularity and legalese at this point and concentrate on the technical work for having the functionality in place. If a decent level is not reached in the technical part then why bother about the rest,

OK.

A foundation exists that can be installed onto the n900 that displays an xterm. At the moment closed-source binaries enable full functionality of this foundation.

The Harmattan UI now open source currently installable to the n900 (maemo5).

Can the same Harmattan UI be installed onto the foundation layer?

Or have I deviated from Harmattan project?

Hey, I just spoke with Carsten in #meego-arm

His hacking and building towards meego on arm is commendable, however it seems that it is targeting the full meego-rpm distribution.

I am under the impression this differs from what the Meego-harmattan release will be by virtue not only of the packaging mechanism but most likely the underlying versions.


Can we have some clarification on whether a version of meego based on the Harmattan branch is possible to be worked on in public and if so, where is this work being undertaken?

Who says I can't contribute with my time in multiple places? :P There's not much work that can be done before Harmattan SDK's are out.

Ok Carsten,
so theres no work being done publicly towards Meego-Harmattan at this time?

ie nobody is trying to get this version of meego onto n900 and all work is towards a later other version of 'true meego' ?

There's obviously going kernel work going on in the MeeGo (RPM based) for N900 project. This piece are bound to be integrated to MeeGo-Harmattan-on-N900. There can't be any public work done until well, Harmattan in some kind is out.

Not much more I can add beyond all that up top.

If you are still confused, the best way you can look at it is using the package management. MeeGo is RPM, Harmattan is DEB (same as our N900 current Maemo). Even if you've no idea what that means, just understand that the letters RPM don't equal DEB and we're good.

This thread about taking the DEB base (so maemo), adding MeeGo compat layer, and adding the MeeGo/Harmattan Handset UX. That is what Harmattan will be on the next device.

Now, this leads into my question:

Why? Don't get me wrong - I think it's cool to have this project/idea and when Harmattan does open up porting it might be fun... but still - why?

I do understand the differences between RPM and DEB; and while personally I prefer DEB, that's neither here nor there. The real crutch here is, especially for end users: All indications are that the UI/UX used on Harmattan will be extremely similar if not identical to the MeeGo handset UI/UX - hell, they renamed Harmattan to MeeGo (speaking specifically to the UI/UX).

So honestly, whats the point of working on two ports of two operating systems that in the end will be (theoretically) completely compatible with eachother and also look identical?

Why split up focus like that? It seems to me just focusing on improving and quicker porting of the MeeGo base, with the Handset UI/UX is all that is needed because MeeGo is the real future, and Harmattan is just being finished so that the investment into it wasn't wasted.

Unless Harmattan, with the deb base, includes things that will be lost once the move to full MeeGo takes place? Like GTK+?

Because really, if they are truly compatible as I'm to understand the hope is for them to be, it is not difficult by any measure to grab a DEB, repackage it to RPM, and throw into the MeeGo repositories instead of just using the Harmattan ones directly.

Best way for me to rationalize it is to look at a timeline where we have Fremantle lifetime (up to it's last updates), Harmattan alpha to final release, MeeGo releases, a future Nokia productized MeeGo (RPM!). These don't go on a straight line, more like parallel ones.

Harmattan is obviously closest and would be the first one feature complete. MeeGo develops alongside and pushes out versions which we have ('community'/MeeGo) project support for on N900. Nokia puts on their differentiation at some point but I have no idea how that'll look like (I can't tell the future).

This project would track Harmattan releases and end up in something similar to it's final release, but for N900. Logic dictates that a productized MeeGo will first come later.

This is to fill the gap between Fremantle lifetime being up and a quite usable MeeGo (RPM) on N900. Most people will be fine with Fremantle updates, some want the newest of the newest.

Also, what qgil said:

The first thing is to see if this initiative can deliver something technically usable and useful, with a real user demand beyind the usual tinkerers.

How close are we to a release - even it is a development version?

To Harmattan alpha, beta or whatever? Don't know. Think they mentioned some things on Maemo Summit but I forget what.

Again, we can't really do much until this is out.