Apologies if this has been raised before, but I've not seen it if it has.

As we all know, there are a fair few important components that are closed source, and are almost certainly going to remain that way, even though Maemo 5 is a end-of-life platform. (Incidentally, has there been any movement on auditing the closed package statuses?)

A thought occurred to me several times back though - since much more of Meego is going to be open, can we not backport some of this open code to replace the closed parts of Maemo? Even if it only gives a starting point, it's got to be better than reimplementing from scratch. All thrown into the Community SSU, there's potentially a lot that could be gained from that. The fact is what I've been looking at for my current project suggests that a lot of the phone code in Meego is quite clearly the closed bits of Maemo.

My current point of interest is SMS handling, and I'm currently browsing over the formerly top-secret Maemo code for telepathy-ring., and seeing #ifdefs around a something related to a broken feature in Maemo (VCalendar sent via SMS). The copyright also goes back to 2007, suggesting quite clearly it's useful to us.

Thoughts?

Is all of this source code for MeeGo easily available?

I am sure if MAG and other CSSU devels or anyone else interested would be able to make good use of this

That's a really good suggestion you're throwing. As a non-coder myself, I didn't think about it. But my thoughts are the following: If you're gonna be so much hard work and effort into importing MeeGo to Maemo...why not just keep working on MeeGo instead and leave Maemo behind? What I mean to say is, wouldn't it be easier and specially future-proof, to import Maemo to MeeGo? I think Smoku's Cordia Project is one of the best idea I have ever heard on this site (among many others of course). I have never seen any UI greater than Maemo's, specially the multitasking. (I hate MeeGo's multitasking...it looks too much like alt-tab'in on Windows)

meego.gitorious.org

Way, way more of the system (basically, 100%) than was available for Maemo.

Thing is, I'm not really too fussed about MeeGo. It'll always be 3rd rate on the N900 (heck, Maemo 5's only 2nd rate by way of Nokia's support of it).

Maemo is great, but it has omissions. I love my N95, hell I was still using it constantly when it was 3-4 years old until I got my N900, and it still rocks (aside from the browser and RAM issues). I just miss little phone things Symbian does better than Maemo - things like handling all esoteric types of SMS for example, integrated MMS support, custom contact fields, or just being able to send anything via Ir. I want to get the source and fix those little glaring feature omissions to make Maemo even better, and leave MeeGo for my next phone.

I guess we should also clarify things here, when you say MeeGo, do yo mean MeeGo, or MeeGo/Harmatten?

Well, I am mainly talking about MeeGo alone. I don't really like Harmatten nor support it. I don't see how Nokia can beat Maemo 5, to me it is simply the best mobile OS I have ever used. But you are right, nothing is perfect. The phone part of Maemo 5 could...use a little work to say the least, lol. But the way I personally see it, Maemo OS is dying, and living on life support (community). The future is MeeGo (hopefully with Intel/AMD fully backing it up). And if that is the future (to my eyes), it would be better to starting customizing it to fit our needs. A Maemo UI running on top of MeeGo using Symbian's phone components , I really don't see how it can get better, lol.

How can you not like something that you've never seen?

Because I dont see why they needed to upgrade to Maemo 6. It's like Microsoft when they rushed to launch Vista when Windows XP was perfectly fine back then. Of course 7 now beats them all, just like I hope MeeGo would beat all Maemos...