What I would like to know is if Moblin views it the same way, and if they will just drop the Moblin brand in favor of MeeGo.

One to ask @geekygirldawn perhaps? All of the following have come from the Moblin side so far. I'm very much getting the impression that, apart from Qt, Moblin is providing the technology for MeeGo - at least the starting point:

• All the source code released so far.
• All the packages are existing Moblin RPM packages.
• All the low-level stuff (fastboot etc)
• All the developers that have shown themselves publicly or discussed things on IRC.
• The one announced MeeGo device (LG jumping on the bandwagon since it was going to be a Moblin device anyway).

With that kind of code legacy, and the focus to date of "meego.com is a website for developers", it seems that Moblin is going through a rebranding exercise whereas Maemo is going through a rebirth.

The Moblin trunk has already been rebranded to MeeGo. At least when I tested it yesterday.

Intel is dropping the Moblin brand in favor of MeeGo, yes. So is doing Nokia for anything beyond Maemo 5.

Moblin going through a rebranding exercise? Put yourself in the feet of a Moblin contributor:

- You now get a UI framework based on Qt.
- The API is also Qt based. GTK+ and Clutter APIs available but not in the driver seat anymore.
- A Web Runtime maintained by Nokia will land as well.
- The 'pocketable' form factor and 'finger friendly' use cases go from 'basically futuristic' to 'big part of the deal'.
- You just happen to be in a platform that supports ARM as well, opening the door right now to the "mobile phone" crew.
- More to come when the MeeGo architecture is explained in detail.

There hasn't been any source code "released" so far. Indeed, what you have seen is a provisional post-Moblin configuration. Please wait for a first release (or at least a detailed platform description) to judge the MeeGo stack. Please also wait for the day there is an ARM configuration as well.

The OBS comes from OpenSUSE, best in class. Moblin adopted it, Mer adopted it, MeeGo adopts it as well. Maemo didn't have any public build infra so the move makes sense.

About developers, Moblin developers already worked in the public so for them the change is big but still they were already working and discussing outside. Most MeeGo developers from Nokia (Harmattam developers, if you know what I mean) are still working inside Nokia, in many cases on components of the MeeGo architecture that haven't been announced publicly. I guess everything will be much easier for them once the Harmattan alpha release is out (working to release on 1Q, as promised).

Still, the amount of Nokia and Intel developers that have shown up visibly in MeeGo is very small compared to the real size of both teams. Also no wonder, there hasn't been too much to discuss for the majority of them, unless you want to be the NNth person engaging in a deb/rpm discussion.

Your measure of people showing up on IRC or adding themselves to a wiki page should completed by active participants in meego-dev, though. There I have seen posts from Kate Alhola, Alexander Bokovoy, Felipe Contreras, Thiago Maceira, Ville Vainio, and Marius Vollmer, among other nokians non-developers. There are also several developers that are not Nokia employees but they work full time on Nokia projects (I'm not even including the maemo.org team here). The Maemo development is just probably more distributed in term of companies and email suffixes than Moblin development.

My conclusion: MeeGo is rebrand and rebirth for both projects. For plenty of platform developers is mostly about rebranding and more syncing with other teams. For most application developers and users is a full next step, no matter where you come from.

Actually the Maemo crew got used already to the Qt horizon (and Web Runtime, for those who cared until now). For the average Moblin developer the change is a big sudden disruption.

openSUSE is also doing a side Moblin rebranding project called Goblin.

Having had a chance to talk to the people at MWC last week, from what i gathered was that Maemo is going to become MeeGo, but the point of change in the temporal frame was not talked about. We were just told that MeeGo will take over soon but how soon was not disclosed. Although it was said that the code will be released in Q2/Q3

Most of the Maemo Employees like Jussi, Peter etc all were clueless as to how and when the branding will take place.

On a quick word with Arri Jasski, I was told that Maemo is definitely going to become MeeGo and we will not confuse our customers on this issue. I was also hinted that Maemo 6 will become MeeGo eventually.

I feel this a delicate issue as either community would want more power, for instance, who will head the MeeGo forums (maemo admin or moblin admin) who will be the marketing dude, etc etc.

Although it looks nice on paper but it could turn out ugly, if you get what i mean.

For now I can see that there are already people working on MeeGo from the inside and that the working team has been finalized.

Anyone from here with more details, please share your views. We need a community perspective on this so share your thoughts.

Probably this (who loses what, who wins what) discussion also shows why starting with an empty forum or a website structure, which is different from both parent initiatives, is a good idea.

@qgil: I've drafted a milestone table in the MeeGo wiki, not because I know what is happening, but to show the need for some proper target setting. I would appreciate if you or other officials from the steering group could add the Mx. milestones or more soon.

http://wiki.meego.com/MeeGo_Milestones

Open working means not just developers, but the whole MeeGo initiative adopting a different style. Besides, having measurable targets is one of the basics steps for projects - in this case it would benefit developers, vendors (even community commitment) to know where this whole thing is going.

Indeed.

There was stuff under http://repo.meego.com/trunk/repo/ - however this now seems to have moved somewhere else or been removed.

Yes, so the fact there's a Moblin-derived configuration shows that Moblin is providing the base of the technology, doesn't it?

Cool, hopefully that will sort things out.

One of the big technical questions is whether there'll be compatibility with an upstream distro to make it easy for application developers to reuse existing packages for enabling libraries. One of the big deciding factors is whether there are large enough teams of developers to make maintaining the base packages of a distro viable - without overly impacting the user-facing deliverables or the ability for existing packages to be reused.

How many MeeGo developers are there, then? i.e. those paid to work on MeeGo. It's always been opaque with Maemo, but now that MeeGo is open, this should be able to be made more clear - although there are probably commercial interests to be protected.

True.

That's only one part of the story. If someone wants to go into deeper analisys, these are the things to look at:

- Technology selections: who leads the development and maintenance of each component selected. You will find some technologies "brought" or "pushed" basically by Intel, others basically by Nokia and then others misc.

- Involvement in "others misc". Nokia and Intel are lead or strong developers in several community projects with very diverse copyrights and contributors.

- Integration. There is a merit integrating fast and well in the open. Intel has a good infra in place based on OBS and concentrating in x86. This is what you are seeing evolving to MeeGo. Wait for releases and ARM support to see more clearly the Nokia contribution there.

- Developer tools. There is a merit providing a good developer environement and tools. Nokia contributes mainly Qt and Web Runtime tools, Intel has good tools as well, more focused on device manufacturers.

And sujrely there are other areas of contribution. And at the end I believe the contributions from each project are overall balanced. And this is a reason why these two giants could actually agree onh something concrete.

How exactly will Maemo become MeeGo?

The way I see it is that Maemo Platform is left behind by Nokia and they are moving all their Linux Tablet resources to the new project - it was called Maemo 6 at the begining and rebranded to MeeGo after joining forces with Intel.

All the core technologies unique to Maemo are left behind. Debian core, Hildon GTK+, Clutter based UI, application distribution system, etc.

MeeGo is going to be completely new beast with no connections with Maemo Platform. (Except for a few developers hired by some company that was working on it some time ago.)


P.S. I don't really want to cry here that Nokia is dropping Maemo. Maemo is alive and kicking and I love developing for it. If there will be enough interest, the community is perfectly capable of creating "real" Maemo 6, beeing it Mer or anything else named. I just don't see 'Maemo becoming MeeGo".