Originally Posted by fatalsaint

This is true, but it's also not surprising and to be expected since this moved from a techie/geek forum to a more user-based forum. Users tend to want to feel safe, secure, and know that their purchase was worth their hard-earned money. They don't usually want to work on their phone they just want to use it. Unfortunately, the impression left by all this debacle from Nokia has left them feeling they've wasted money, were duped, scammed, etc.

It's a long story but basically:

Nokia will not officially support MeeGo on n900.
Community is doing port and some Nokia employees are lending a hand too.
Drivers for n900 are still closed but community are writing open source versions (e.g. battery management)
MeeGo for n900 is till very immature. The next release is due in October and will have a gui (maybe very basic version but feature complete?)

Nokia know full well that if other venders join the MeeGo bandwagon, then their job becomes a lot more competitive on that front. Nokia became complacent, they were top dog and didn't/don't put R&D or customer upgrade paths in the places where their customers really want it. This is something that will drastically alter their hand now with MeeGo. They will have to continually be the best to keep on top, Android and Apple aside.

This, among the other reasons I've stated, is why I believe there are so many people feeling abandoned, and refer to the N900 as a dead platform. And in this, I can't disagree with them. I have my own reservations, as I expressed, about the future - even of MeeGo - because of those hardware components and the legal issues you are referring to. As long as Nokia holds the chains on those (whether they want to or not is not my point) - then when Nokia leaves the platform MeeGo will be that much more difficult, or suddenly need to be made illegal, to port any of the newer community builds or future MeeGo versions because the "blobs", as you call them, can no longer be obtained from Nokia.

Originally Posted by Laughing Man

Currently the other hardware vendors are using Android (which likely comes with Google Maps). So their current problem is not a weapon that makes their platform unique, but rather they have nobody using their platform. So holding a card that makes a Nokia Meego device more unique than a X Meego device doesn't make sense when X Meego device doesn't exist. And when you have a greater competitor that's grabbing more and more manufacturers.

Originally Posted by fatalsaint

Yes. I was really put off on Day 1 and I think the grudge has sort of distanced me more than I had originally intended.

I really did want to delve into MeeGo and really start into something big.. but when I looked at the massive difference in functionality between the intel dev platform, vs the nokia dev platform.. it really struck a nerve. I guess I just haven't moved over that hump just yet.

Here's my question. It's simply bad business (IMHO) to put money into a project that you get nothing back from. Nokia is not going to be pushing MeeGo on the N900.. they are not going to be selling "more" N900's promising MeeGo on the N900.. they are not doing anything to get any new userbase to the platform. This to me, implies clearly, that they consider the N900 to be over. So why would they continue to expend resources to it?

I know that a dev platform has to work and function in order to properly develop on it, but it doesn't have to be polished or bugfixed.

This, among the other reasons I've stated, is why I believe there are so many people feeling abandoned, and refer to the N900 as a dead platform.

Nokia leaves the platform MeeGo will be that much more difficult, or suddenly need to be made illegal, to port any of the newer community builds or future MeeGo versions because the "blobs", as you call them, can no longer be obtained from Nokia.

Isn't the message from x86 Linux distributions clear:

You're only as good as your supported drivers, proprietary or otherwise.

Originally Posted by Stskeeps

Random fact: there's 12 packages that don't build for ARM in MeeGo Trunk (fails to compile). We've started patching those and most are trivial build errors. So from a build perspective, we're not much different. On image building side (mic2 support) ARM is a equal member as well now.

Short story: because it gets a strong ARM offering in MeeGo which is useful for many various reasons, such as platform adaptation. Who'd want to adapt a platform where the ARM reference device works like crap?

Case: Why are we implementing power saving in our N900 kernel when there's no real benefit to developers in this?

Fact: Because we're making a complete hardware adaptation, not a 'developer only' one. A hardware adaptation has to be full to be stable or not be worth anything. Rest of OS, that's another thing.

Agreed, this might be a problem, but let's see how we can solve this in a sane manner. To be honest, it should be entirely possible to keep this going. Even at what, 2 man hours a month to check the lights are still on and things are building and getting exported as redistributable bits at repo.meego.com.

Think we're overestimating those few blob's importance. And as I've repeatedly said, I'd like to get rid of them if I could. But as daperl once said:

So, we have them to give a proper user experience. I'm hoping to get them to a redistributable license.

Originally Posted by fatalsaint

Ok, but building != functionality. I still cannot use Wifi easily .

That is how I see MeeGo for the N900. The problem? That's not real future for users.

Thus, I think Nokia will get to the point that even 2 man hours a month to make sure the image is built for the N900 isn't worth it.
<snip>
(or even just openly distributable) BME/3D/whatever binary blob to ensure that no matter where Nokia goes: As long as MeeGo is running we can port the latest and greatest to the N900 (within hardware limitations).

Originally Posted by Stskeeps

For users.. well, ask Nokia. MeeGo can only give what's contributed. But what would you really want on N900?

If you're asking me (I use my N900 daily) as a user, here's what I dream of:

MeeGo on N900 with a proper hardware adaptation (this -always- comes first)

Nokia differentiation packaged on top of it, differentiation that is genuinely useful, accessible if I plug in a IMEI and accept this is not a product and can't call about it, etc. I mean. Nokia has no problem distributing Nokia binaries to Nokia devices.. this hasn't changed.

Originally Posted by Stskeeps

Don't get me started on connman. Once the caffeine has kicked in, my plan is to debug it and exorcise the damn thing until it does our bidding. Wasted so long time on it's bugs.