The End is Coming: What do we do next?
 

Here's my opinion about the future of Maemo and maemo.org. I am currently an (un-elected, volunteer) maemo community council member, and an avid member of this community for about 4 years.

Recently, there have been calls for the Maemo community to wrest all the closed bits out of the hands of Nokia, or to somehow turn Maemo into a separate, community-run entity, free of Nokia's sponsorship. I don't see these posts accomplishing anything for two simple reasons; we're never going to get the closed bits from Nokia, and the Maemo community is (almost) nothing without Nokia, mainly because Maemo is nothing without Nokia hardware and that hardware is no longer in production.

I think by the time Nokia funding runs out for maemo.org at the end of 2012 it will be a kingdom of dust; there will be a few nostalgic enthusiasts around, but it will be a lot like any other forum for niche, obsolete platforms; mostly deserted and uninteresting.

I don't see Nokia ever opening any of the closed pieces.

The one tiny hope I see is if a champion within Nokia with some political influence were to fight through the bureaucracy, inertia and indifference to wrestle the closed bits out into the open. But I really just do NOT see that happening, not with most of the closed bits having some link to hardware made by the notorious TI and most of the people who care being laid off from Nokia. Even when Maemo was a vibrant group within Nokia, nobody could get any action on opening closed pieces of old versions of Maemo. Now there is even less hope.

But even if the closed bits were made open, or Cordia succeeded in re-basing the Maemo UI on MeeGo, and Maemo flourished again, the hardware is aging fast. I don't expect to have a working N900 by mid-2012, although my N800 might keep chugging along with a partly-working touchscreen.

Is a community centred around the Cordia tablet really a Maemo community?

Where do I think we should go from here?

I think the best thing the Maemo community can do over the next year and a half is to transition to the MeeGo community, although I don't particularly like the MeeGo.com forums very much, and there haven't been any third-party ITT-style forums popping up elsewhere. I'm hoping for a new N9-centric community to grow up somewhere, hopefully outside of the Linux Foundation's sphere of control. I'll probably go there, wherever that is, until it sputters out in a couple of years.

You may have noticed that I'm not very hopeful. You're right, I'm not. This community has been so amazing, but the foundations are crumbling away beneath us and there's nowhere else to go.

Worst of all, I don't see any alternatives after Harmattan. I don't see anyone else taking up the MeeGo handset torch, and I don't see any other viable Linux handsets on the horizon. The WebOS devices are a possibility, but their current hardware is unappealing (to me), and everyone else is going towards Android, which doesn't have any kind of "normal" GNU/Linux stack, especially an X server. And don't even get me started on the "locked black box" OSes like iOS and WP7.

Are we doomed to lose the GNU\Linux in our Pockets? :(

Re: The End is Coming: What do we do next?
 

so you mean to say that we completely ditch N900 by the end of 2012 and convert the forum into meego... what if nokia doesnt make any more Meego device after N9 or may be just a 1/2 more Meego Device and turn themselve into WIN7 OS then what...i personally dont want to happen but dont find it any option either... any idea to save this Device and this beautiful Community... i have been into this community about a year, havent done anything good for community but still i make myself feel home when am here.. :( guys dont let n900 die please...

Re: The End is Coming: What do we do next?
 

Don't get me wrong, but I think maemo has managed to endure existence without Nokia for quite some time, now... We might still have the repositories, but I'm afraid that's about it.

Or am I missing something?

Re: The End is Coming: What do we do next?
 

I'm saying that the N900 will ditch itself by the end of 2012, because most of the devices out there will be dead or malfunctioning.

And Nokia has clearly, loudly stated that they will not make any more MeeGo devices after the N9.

We can baby our Maemo devices, try to keep them running, but handsets aren't like classic cars, not many people can keep them running when parts begin to fail.

Re: The End is Coming: What do we do next?
 

I'm treating my old N900 like a newborn baby. Gentle, gentle. :)

For all its faults, N900 still has no competition in my eyes.

Re: The End is Coming: What do we do next?
 

My thoughts as shared a while back: http://tabulacrypticum.wordpress.com...ng-live-maemo/

Qole and I are very close on this. :(

Re: The End is Coming: What do we do next?
 

Having used the N950, I also realize how badly crippled the N900's hardware is by lack of RAM. Even though the N950 has a similar chipset, it has 1 GB of RAM, and that makes a huge difference in speed. The terrible swap issues on the N900 are another symptom of this problem.

Like the 770 and N8x0s before it, the N900 looks very dated when placed beside the much better performing devices appearing on the market these days.

Even if we baby our N900s, they're rapidly gaining "quaint" status.

Re: The End is Coming: What do we do next?
 

That's what I see as well. After all the failed promises about the N900 (like flash 10.1), the delays on Harmattan and then MeeGo, it's hard to trust them with anything else.
I love my N900 and I love the UI and usability that the N9/N950 appear to have. But they are too little too late. I went ahead and got an HTC Sensation. There will be no ecosystem for thoses phones and unfortunately phones at this period in time are becoming platforms to launch/provide for other applications or functions.
As much as I admire all of you guys here for all the stuff that you gave us for the N900 (Really amazing stuff, stuff that Nokia said can't be done like overclocking, portrait desktop and much more), I don't think they are enough to sustain the platform much longer.
Besides N9/N950 are not Maemo or MeeGo (Step 4.5 out of 5 as Nokia would put it) and frankly I don't think Nokia will go beyond this one.

Big red sign here that says Dead End for me (again).

Re: The End is Coming: What do we do next?
 

Qole, your analysis is pretty accurate, nobody will risk his/hers job advocating the opening the source. Still, while the link between Nokia and maemo.org still exists, we should at least try and hope for the best. That is about what we can do through "regular" channels.

As for potential re-definition of maemo goals. Consider the following situation.

From the point of a software developer, you can say there is no future in legacy devices, but what about the software that is written by community developers?

Don't you think that that software has also limited life, defined by the end-of-life of device. As a software developer how do you feel when your software gets dumped due to the device discontinuation?

You can agree to that, and possible get a shiny new cell phone/table/etc, and start everything again.

In order to avoid that, we need the "free" hardware platforms, that will prevent vendors from controlling the end-of-life of both software and hardware.

qole, is n9/n950 as closed hardware as all of the device from maemo program?

At the moment it looks like n9/n950 is used to motivate the developers to move to QT framework (all-in-one approach, that can scale across devices/os/platforms). From there Nokia can easily move the whole community (and the applications) to WF7.
I am not trying to feed the FUD, but how do you feel about that possibility?

Re: The End is Coming: What do we do next?
 

Nice text.
I think we can say safely that GNU\Linux Open-Source OS's were nothing but a "trend". And no, Android doesnt count. Companies want control, open-source gives the customers too much of that control, to change and manipulate their handsets.

The only way maemo could live on, is if we could find a way to migrate it to another, newer handset. I have no knowledge about how far-fetched this is, but i am hoping that we will be able to do so.
As I look onward, I just dont know what phone will i get next. Is the N9 cool? Definitely, But it also lack grounds for a real withstanding app-store. It has no future, and as an expensive niche device, from a company that had a failure after failure those past few years, i could see it busting. But i guess that's what Elop hopes for, heh.
The rest out there are not very appealing either. iOS and WP7 are out of the question. The new GS2 from Samsung is still not what i am looking for, but it is actually going in a decent direction in terms of BME and specs, so maybe in a year from now when its time to part with my N900 i could tolerate a Googlevice.

However, I still hope\expect for someone to take a shot with MeeGo.
There are quite a few companies out there who will not survive unless they reinvent themselves. I'm talking about companies like LG, SE, Acer, etc.
With Meego, which in a few months will be a free and ready to deploy OS, they could distinguish themselves between those WP7 and Android vendors out there. The new swapping Nokia UI proves that meego can be a real eye-candy, which is very unlike any previous maemo related product. We also know that meego is quite lightweight as the N9 is not a state-of-the-art specs monster, and it seems that the OS works terrific.
I know that those are just my hopes and aspirations but i do think that while Nokia pulling the plug is both hurtful and stupid[my opinion] it could lead to another vendor or two to take charge and produce Meego handset, possibly without too much in-OS competition and with an Intel back.

Re: The End is Coming: What do we do next?
 

i believe this was the worst end of tonight ,i had till date .
very much enough to make me sad .i will go where others go .where maemo goes .:(
And for meego,if they ( Nokia ) could not understand this presentation by stskeeps http://summit.meegonetwork.fi/speaker/carsten-munk then to me they probably are way over ours head ! dummies
i hope this is not a tactical approach by Nokia to first lure us towards meego and then kick towards WP7.

Re: The End is Coming: What do we do next?
 

Great post Qole - depressing, but probably the most accurate post I have read on here for a while.

Given how Nokia seem to be crippling the sales/marketing of the N9, either by accident or conspiratorial design, and that for mere mortals like me the N950 will remain a mythical beast, the N900 does seem to be the end of the Maemo/Meego line. (BTW if anyone wants to chuck an N950 to a longstanding user, I'll catch it)

Currently I feel like I did when Psion pulled out of the PDA market, doomed my 5MXs to history. The community slowly ran out of steam and although there are a few diehards hanging on, the community really lasted only another year or two as the majority of the devices became too fragile to risk using in day to day use. I still have two which I pull out occasionally, stroke and wonder what might have been - N900 in another year (if not less) will be there as well.

To early for me to say what would/will replace it. Hopefully not for a while yet though.

Re: The End is Coming: What do we do next?
 

N900's main feature to me is that it's like a little linux computer in my pocket. I quit using my laptop entirely after I bought the N900.

Android/Symbian/WinPhone/iPhone/etc are all too "smartphony" in comparison. If my N900 dies and I can't replace it cheap, I'd probalby go back to carrying a basic phone and dust off my laptop.

I really just want an N900 with more RAM. :)

edit: and I will add, since this post is reading like a eulogy for N900, that while the hardware specs and Linux are what drew me to it, it was the community and developers who made it truly useful and interesting. Thanks to each and every one of you.

Re: The End is Coming: What do we do next?
 

I imagine I will find my self hmm-ing and haww-ing over various handsets, wishing they had the specs I want. Ogling various projects like the Freerunner and OpenPandora, waiting forever for things to come to fruition.

I'm probably going to lurch down the Cordia path, simply because that seems like the next most viable route, and I like supporting projects like this. Unless a major vendor comes out with a handset running MeeGo and actually participates in the community (and I can buy the handset directly instead of forced through the carriers,) I don't really see anywhere else to go.

Re: The End is Coming: What do we do next?
 

I guess that the Two Cultures here are finally going to destroy the place. I think they are the ITT crowd, not particularly adoring Nokia, more user and less developer oriented, and the gung-ho Maemo and Meego fans, more developer and pro oriented, organization and discipline minded. Now that Nokia is ratting out their raison d etre, they would rather go down with the ship than return to the freewheeling ITT base.

Since maemo is obviously doomed to die, the only way to survive is to be more open to the ITT wave, but since that isnt acceptable to the hard core, fragmentation and decay seem inevitable.

Re: The End is Coming: What do we do next?
 

Zaurus and OPIE redux.

Qole's post reminds me of the open Zaurus dayd, the initial euphotlria of an open build for the Zaurus but eventual slow death.

Without Nokia's support, th OS might still live (though not withiut the closed bits), but the hardware will die and eventually the community will die.

But i have hope for Linux in the pocket device. When the Zaurus died (one of the firt successful linux pdas), the despondency was same but the Linux momentum had started and then came nokia with Maemo.

Am sure after Nokia someone will still carry the handheld linux torch forward in some way. just maybe not as maemo/meego.

Re: The End is Coming: What do we do next?
 

the Nokia N900 introduced me to the LINUX world. If it wasn't for the n900, I don't have a mobile device that runs on 600mhz-1000mhz, knowledge that you can have more than one OS in one device, Ubuntu, XP mode on my Win7 Laptop, I don't know what "Bricked" means, and a bunch of hacks and stuff......

I am :(

Re: The End is Coming: What do we do next?
 

Great post. Honest and sobersome. After weeks (months?) of speculative threads around Meego/N9-N950 I came to realise that the N900 had already passed its expiration date. The broken USB thread came back to life, and more and more For Sale threads started.

With the refreshing wisdom and maturity injected that comes with each contributor in reply to Qole's commentary, it is quite a shame that this has to be witnessed at the end of such an era. I too am not hopeful that Meego will be championed by any other company and this N900 and Harmattan device is all we have left.

I joined this community quite late and feel like I missed the best years of Maemo. I will stalk this forum for another year only because strangely I find the people here far more interesting and 'open' minded than any other 'community' that exists. We discuss, love and hate Nokia/Maemo but come around at the end of the day to help each other.

I say let's enjoy what we still have. Maybe we have Meego, and if we do I dont see why talk.meego.org (TMO) can't exist :cool:

Re: The End is Coming: What do we do next?
 

I know there are not many maemo developers out there and that they don't have infinite time, but I know there are still a few thousands of people interested in this device. We should coordinate our efforts towards something and cordia is one of our best shots. The thing is, when is it the right time to abandon current hardware and move into new one?

My thoughts is that we should inspect all devices that exist now and find the most suitable one i.e. one that

• is up to date
• has open bootloader
• has keyboard
• has already managed to run any form of linux pretty successfully
• has WVGA resolution

For example the htc hd2 may not fulfill the first rule but it's one of the most hackable devices out there and it runs android fully even if it was a windows device (really different architecture)

So after we decide which is the next reference device, we target all our efforts to have a usable meego-cordia (or could it be cordia over android kernel?? can android kernel be modifed to use X?)

If we succeed then this community can live on for two more years. The downside is that very little new people will come here (I came here because I got a N900, some users of the X device we choose will join, but surely it won't be the first forum they will find)

Re: The End is Coming: What do we do next?
 

geneven, I honestly don't understand your point. I would love to go back to the "freewheeling ITT base" of these forums that I loved so much, but the ITT engine is out of steam; the Nokia products that spawned these forums are fading into history. :(

Re: The End is Coming: What do we do next?
 

Ok, so... Assume someone Does publish Fremantle's full source, along with all the drivers and maybe even documentation, to sweeten the deal.

How long would you give this device? And how would this affect the community?

Re: The End is Coming: What do we do next?
 

hold your breath guys, CPU vendors are about to sell cheap phone platform too (x86), I am sure they will be small companis who will integrate them to provide custom devices and sell a device with the OS your choice (ie debian, mer) ... look at SHR they did not stopped when openmoko closed , I still believe there will be small series pockatable linux devices soon ... maybe we'll have to focus on functional priorities (*) and not marketting now , and see how many are we and much time / money are we willing to spend ... the question is not the death of maemo but the future of a stronger free mobile community,


what I fear is fragmentation of this community ... why not create a survey on where to move ? meego, fso, limo ?

Or this future proof OS for smartphones : http://identi.ca/tag/amigawillneverdie ? (</joke>)


(*) http://pics.nase-bohren.de/OSes_then_now.jpg

Re: The End is Coming: What do we do next?
 

I appreciate the responses but I am sad to see this thread. Not because it argues to wind down maemo.org. But because of what it doesn't say and because it seems aimed to head off a community vote on its future.

For some time now, we have been discussing the future of maemo.org. I have participated in many of the discussions and have indicated that I will personally support the continuation of maemo.org as a community governed open source community for maemo-based and derived software. I saw the role of Council as facilitating community consideration and framing the debate; not deciding the future. Most recently, it appeared that would involve a referendum vote during the next election, which I even took the time earlier today to explain to a community member why the vote should include the "winding down" option even though I disagree with it.

http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...&postcount=512

I had asked a week ago for help from Council members to do this. A community vote, it seems, is objectionable to Qole. This thread was started, which does not even attempt to explain its context. Here is the response from him just now when asked about a community vote:

"What exactly do you expect to gain from a vote?

I doubt you'll get the full council behind your idea of creating an independent maemo.org, especially with the end date still so far away, so you won't be able go to Nokia and say, "We, the council, are in agreement to ask you to give us control of maemo.org" and if you want to have a vote so you can say, "The majority of the community wants Nokia to give us control of maemo.org" that still will have no more influence than if you were to go to Quim or Peter with a well-thought-out plan and say, "there are a few of us in the Maemo community who would like to try to run maemo.org after Nokia stops funding the maemo.org infrastructure, and here's how we plan to do it."

[By the way, the indication of the issue - "give us control of maemo.org" is wrong.]

Let the community decide its future. And do it in a way that is fair. Let's have a vote.

Re: The End is Coming: What do we do next?
 

I sure hope this doesn't turn into sniping.

I think a vote is premature and would rather shake out some more discussion to at least assess the clear options. Too many polls are formed half-assed and end up omitting key options. I don't see anything wrong at all with qole starting public discourse first.

But let's please leave personalities out of it and focus on facts.

Re: The End is Coming: What do we do next?
 

this is bad the community is sad/angry (for good reasons) but this make me wonder if people will even buy n9 :( :/

make me wonder if I am stupid enought to buy it but what the hell is there alternatives :mad:

this is so damn frustrating. And btw. dont expect anyone else take over meego on handset its not that simple. ARM comanys is fokus on Android and WP7 except maybe TI. but without Nokia Meego handset is dead.

And Intel is no way near competing on handset market yet...

Re: The End is Coming: What do we do next?
 

I reluctantly went back to Android for daily use long ago, but still find hanging out here like no place else. Still whip out the N900 now and then to try new stuff.

But as with all tech devices these days things are moving really fast and the N900 is already getting relatively obsolete. Maemo/MeeGo has nowhere to go device-wise. But I'm being redundant here...stating the obvious and already said.

Point is, this is a great online community supporting unique devices. It will be a sad day when mamo.org goes dark.

Anyway, the only chance I see of MeeGo continuing to carry the mobile Linux torch is for Intel to outbid Microsoft for Nokia and getting serious about making MeeGo hardware. Poor odds on that.

Re: The End is Coming: What do we do next?
 

Thanks Mike, you raise a good point: IF this site vanished today (bear with me on the hypothetical), what would the home for the N9 be? If the N9 is still viable past the Nokia support shut-off date for this site, where would an N9 community land? It won't be meego.com, by the way.

Re: The End is Coming: What do we do next?
 

not much just take a look at n900 CE who is the most open platform so far still to few is actually active in that community even if that is the best solution to make sure n900 lives longer :(

Re: The End is Coming: What do we do next?
 

ITT didn't run out of steam; it was steamshovelled into a ditch. As far as I know, there isn't a non-specialized site for tablet fans By default, the closest to that kind of site is mobileread.com, but its focus is book readers and its idea of controversy is something like Top Ten Reads of 2011.

Nokia is basically hijacking the platform out from under us. If we put out the welcome mat for all tablet lovers of all kinds, especially interested in openness and quality and innovation, but not essentially fanboys for anyone, I think we could build a new force for the kind of freewheeling, open computing that is at our roots beyond Nokia or any specific manufacturer.

Re: The End is Coming: What do we do next?
 

Life will find a way.

Re: The End is Coming: What do we do next?
 

ANYone can create a website devoted to [insert subject of choice here]. Reggie started ITT on his own; nothing stops anyone else from following suit.

And there's always http://www.umpcportal.com/ (which could answer my hypothetical N9 question)

Re: The End is Coming: What do we do next?
 

But we're so busy wondering if we can that we didn't stop to wonder if we should!

:D

Re: The End is Coming: What do we do next?
 

It's a lot easier to build on momentum than to create momentum out of nothing. When Reggie started this site, the astral forces were aligned in his favor. History is not usually made so much as bent in some new direction.

Re: The End is Coming: What do we do next?
 

The simple problem is that there have never been any devices quite like the ones Nokia created running Maemo. Nothing in the mobile space has ever hit that sweet spot that the Maemo devices have occupied.

Re: The End is Coming: What do we do next?
 

When Reggie started ITT, the 770 was the device du jour and a tiny handful of people even knew it existed. I remember very well what it was like-- the 770 was my "baby" at the time and I was heavily involved here when I helped launch the N800. I saw how quickly the site caught fire.

Reggie built on whatever momentum there was at the time, same as someone else would now. There would be little if any real difference. And as I noted, umpcportal.com exists now, anyway, and already supports Nokia devices including the N9.

Re: The End is Coming: What do we do next?
 

@qole,

thanks for your sobering but honest post.
whilst it may seem the end of the line for Maemo, Cordia has shown that parts of it (well fremantle and hildon anyway) have a value that will live on well beyond the hardware it was originally designed for.

My N900 spend more time doing duty running Meego CE these days than it does it's original OS, but I know that eventually, even that will pass as the hardware eventually succumbs to being thrashed. Having said that, I am still delighted when I do boot into Fremantle, and am reminded of the many wonderful things about Maemo that i still don't see in their entirety, in other handset on the market. It goes to show that while the hardware may be aging (dare I say obsolete?), the ideas and the implementation/integration of them into the OS are still up there with the best.

Few Linux based OS's live on in their original guise anyway.

With the Nokia/Intel collaboration, Meego was always going to be the final destination/incarnation and I don't see anywhere, that this will really change.
Despite the lack of firm commitment from any of the other major hardware vendors since Nokia dropped their end of the deal, the industry moves too quickly for any of us here to be able to say with certainty that Meego doesn't offer a great way to escape from the software patent/licensing costs that are being imposed on handset manufacturers by the likes of Google and MS.

Intel's investment in Meego continues across a broad range of devices, and I'm sure that once they release high efficiency x86 architecture that will compete with arm, there will be greater reason to develop a "ecosystem" based on common hardware and OS as opposed to the app-store/advertising ecosystem that handset manufacturers and telcos are trying to convince us is the real one......

If anything, Maemo has proven that Mobile Linux works, and for the time being, that's enough for me.

Re: The End is Coming: What do we do next?
 

I know the N900 is a dead man walking. I know that other hardware will make it redundant and already has. I know that less and less software will be released and the completely stopped all together and this forum will end. But that doesn't stop me trading this Nokia N8 for a Nokia E7, then selling that for £240 and then getting an train journey for an hour just to buy another N900.

Why? Because all of it's flaws are outweighed by the benefits. I mean sure its over for flash for the N900, ah well. The hardware is getting old, but am not the type of guy that buys the newest stuff straight the market, like the N9 I can't afford it really. I'll over clock it to 1GHz and make it last. If the applications stop, I already have all the applications I need.

Am hoping I can make it last long enough for a decent enough device to come and replace it. Maybe Kubuntu Mobile will. I hope it will.

Re: The End is Coming: What do we do next?
 

This time I have to disagree with qole in almost full line.

First of all, I think Maemo Community doesn't have *real* bonds with Nokia for quite long time. Don't fool ourselves, in other places than paperwork, Nokia haven't solved *any* of our problems for ages. IMO, the only cases where we heard about it (not mentioning threads about Nokia, irrelevant in this case), are Council talking with them about some cases (which, most of the time, doesn't bring direct answer to most important questions - like, if it will be possible to mirror Nokia Repositories - no offense to council, at least, not purpose of my post), or thing that Nokia is paying bills for servers.

Second, and IMO most important thing is that Maemo community gathered together around CordiaTAB will be - again, IMO - as good as Maemo community gathered around N900. I don't know why You (qole) try to depreciate that. Especially given fact, that successful concluding CordiaTAb project, may mean designing and creating our own tablet in another 2-3 years, like Open Pandora guys did.

IMO, it's much more important and beneficial for community, than supporting Nokia devices like N9 or N950 (to be honest, I don't think Nokia - as company, not particular workers - deserve that, neither N9 do). Gathering around Nokia-driven "half.meego.harmattan.maemo6.whatsnot-with.swipe.propertiary.ui" Meego approach is proposition of *huge* step back, IMO. Let's gather around projects driven by us (like Cordia and CordiaTAB).

Personally, I couldn't care less about "Meego compliant" mark, but IMO using Meego core with Hildon based UI is just way to go.

// side note:

I think fragmentation of countless discussion "future of meego" is becoming huge problem. Really, can't we talk about that in single thread (banning some "individuals" spamming that discussion with off-topics, we all know who deserves that)?

Re: The End is Coming: What do we do next?
 

maemo, meego, N900, N9 all R.I.P.

This site should be shut down immediately to avoid creating confusion and false hopes.

Good bye.

Re: The End is Coming: What do we do next?
 

@ Kajko

you still here?
given the moaning N900 = junk posts that you have been so prolific with over the last several months, i would have thought you had moved on long ago.
Last time I checked, there wasn't anyone standing behind me with a gun pointed at my head telling me to keep logging in to the Maemo forum. I could assume that the same goes for you.
opinions are like *****holes, everyone has one and most stink. probably about time you took your smelly one and found a new place for your negativity, we have many others with a much higher post count to replace you.