Shouldn't that be the other way around? Can anyone point out which part breaks compliance?

Is the manufacturer at fault for using a publicly available (non-beta) release of MeeGo with their own UI and calling it MeeGo? Bearing in mind that all I ever see is that the expectation is that manufacturers will put their own UI on top of the MeeGo base.

I stopped reading as soon as he started whining about his development laptop that he got at a developers conference wasn't consumer market ready

1. When you have come to first summit of a yet-commercially-unreleased OS, don't be surprised you get a prototype. The journalist is evidently used to proprietary software: office editor and Photoshop are his first programs.

2. Don't contradict yourself.

It will take years (at least 2-3) on the market before MeeGo devices will have a chance at carving a decent chunk of market away from Android.

The main benefit of a MeeGo-style OS won't take hold for several years.

First you whine that MeeGo is too late, compared to Android and iOS.
Then you complain that MeeGo is too early, that it's from the future.

3. But keeping the OS afloat that long will take ... significant early market success.

Well, when Nokia, Intel and several other companies are going to use MeeGo, one of 2011 MeeGo devices is bound to be a success, possibly even several devices. Several different successful devices would be a significant success for MeeGo.

4. At one point, after a long explanation that failed to answer the question of why MeeGo didn't yet have a framework for developers to sell their apps, a developer from Norway shouted out: "We don't care about openness, we need to be able to make a living."

First, I don't care about selling, I do care about openness. Most likely, it's because I have never finished anything to a point where anybody would like to pay for it

Second, the framework seems to be separate for separate companies: Nokia, Intel, etc. And when no devices were released, there is no framework yet.

5. What struck me is that they all doubted.

Doubt cannot be separate from progress. The people who doubt are the people who make the world better. The people who don't doubt either don't do anything or act as fanatics.

6. All that matters is that he get it because holy cow free stuff!

Consumer... Would you eat ten pizzas during one meal just because they are free?

I don't think I would take such a device just because it is free. I would probably take it because of its OS, MeeGo. But still not likely. And wouldn't eat free chips just because they are free: chips are unhealthy.

7. "You can either take the version with the open source drivers... or the version with the drivers that work."

Amusing. I have at least one peripheral object which works with Linux fine and doesn't work with Windows at all.

8.
> It came incomplete, so I had to hunt down pieces on my own and plug them in.

Installing additional programs is normal. I hate an OS which comes with all applications preinstalled. Like Windows. Because some applications are unnecessary, and some can be replaced with better alternatives, and OS doesn't allow to uninstall default applications.


> I like doing that sort of crap because I am a huge nerd with lots of free time.

Is using Photoshop a sign of a nerd?

9. "How long do you guess before all these machines are running Ubuntu?"

It's not because MeeGo is bad. It's because MeeGo is perceived as experimental smallish mobile OS, and Ubuntu is all-too-familiar desktop Linux. With command line. Where you can restart UI without restarting OS.

10. Overall, the reporter is impolite. Probably because he had headache after drinking.

In a saner world it should be IMHO. In reality nothing can be "MeeGo compliant" at the moment, not even the images hosted on meego.com, since the compliance spec is not yet final.

The thing to remember is that the only relevance of "compliance" is in determining what gets permission to use the MeeGo trademark (the LF has been pretty heavy handed in protecting that so far, just ask the OpenSuSE or Fedora people). The problem is that the compliance spec is still work in progress and (IMHO) has a long way to go before being fit for purpose. The drafts we've seen so far (the latest one was supposed to go to the TSG for approval this week but they ran out of time and postponed it again) are not very well defined in various areas, and in others try to enforce practices that would be ridiculed in any other OS/distribution. I predict that once the dust has settled most people will ignore compliance and just use a name that doesn't contain the letters m, e, e, g & o to avoid uncertainty and lawyers.

To clarify... it is NEITHER compliant NOR non-compliant, as "compliance" in the context of that version of MeeGo makes no sense.

Did not match my experience at all. Not even close.

The article was crap.

Nobody nailed you to a chair!!!

Perhaps a Bug at your "Texrat Midnight Lecture".

Has anybody already created one?

MeeGoExperts kept complaining, but never left. I think HE was the bug. However, I understand he's a WONTFIX.

How would you know, I don't recall you drinking heavily and following up with incoherent conversations !