N9 - we did it again

In case you have not heard it yet - we did it again, so Nokia has begun shipping of N9.

Poppy patch in park

There was little patch of poppies on my way along Writer's park in Helsinki...

From poppy patch in park

From poppy patch in park

From poppy patch in park

From poppy patch in park

From poppy patch in park

another Maemo lesson - limit your trust to corporations

Open development/Licensing change requests has now interesting header which brings more light and relate to previous post:

Please note that this process is effectively dead. Please see http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=784443 for details. Summary: Nokia doesn't have a Maemo distmaster anymore to process these requests, and does not plan to allocate further resources for Maemo to change this, rather than just trying to make the corresponding Meego components open.

by Josh

and further

Note: *Nothing* was ever opened via this process.

by Jebba

with written aside "a sequence that might help you understand more the current situation" by qgil .

and quote from document on why closed things stay closed (and as you see, never become open, even if someone trying to master "process to open").

Reasons for closed packages

Open source is the licensing model preferred by Nokia in the development of Maemo. There are some reasons to have exceptions, though.

• Brand: Nokia wants to keep a strong brand and identity avoiding any risks of dilution.
• Differentiation: Nokia wants to gain competitive advantage in certain areas by keeping the related software closed.
• Legacy: Nokia keeps some components minimally maintained - the work of opening them has an unclear outcome.
• IPR & licensing issues: Nokia avoids serious risks brought by patents, copyrights or complicated licensing situations.
• Security: Nokia avoids safety risks and liabilities that could be caused by freeing access to certain hardware components.
• Third party: Nokia does not own the code and therefore does not decide on the license.

corporations rarely or never give up on own or peer's interest.

one street corner in Helsinki - tiny etude

there had been British legation in Helsinki in beautiful building (which LIFE had been not able to identify in recent photo digitalization)

which hasn't survived air raid

 and had been eventually replaced by shoe-box building in 1961 with local registration office also known as Albertinkatu 25 - Bulevardi 21 corner in Haikara block .

2010 bottom line - Maemo left behind, Meego is another fruit

after year 2010 wrapped up, one thing calmed down in my mind - for me Maemo has been left behind. Maemo team had released Maemo 5 for N900 along with N900 sales had started. After it had started sales, big heap of still-to-apply patches had been passed to maintenance team and majority had been switched to Harmattan. I had followed both Maemo 5 and Harmattan for several weeks but then I had no choice but switch too into Harmattan-only mode. And then Maemo+Moblin fusion into Meego had been pronounced as PR event. Real Meego deliveries had started several weeks later.

Lessons learned:

• Maemo 5 had been released same way as previous releases, only now it took 9+ months for followup, and same story of leaving behind of
  
• Harmattan aka "first mobile Meego" is totally different beast and openness there is limited compared to Maemo 5
• Meego Moblin is certainly sell-off to Intel no matter how much PR / marketing people try to sell it positive. Since layman public doesn't care what's under hood, I decided to keep it impersonal - after all, kernel is same kernel, no matter what is packaging.
• Luckily I am deep in kernel and don't have to bother much about userland apart from providing them with reliable high-quality kernel APIs. But what I see about Qt and rest of things UI... Well, it is probably Ok with average Joe but I don't like C++ and derivatives (read - Qt too). I just leave it up to "them" - not my business.
  
• Nokia had put all eggs into Qt basket.
  
• Overall feeling is like in movie "Toys" - ex-military invaded previously fun-making toy factory.
  

Meego is different fruit and hence it makes me thinking what do I do about my future and how tight my relationship with all these things is. I still continue to work in core team for Harmattan and further items, with all due diligence like squirrel in a wheel, but... future now is open more than before.

I feel it more like "wheel of life" has made another turn and I must think about change, whatever it is - is it "still Nokia" or something else, I don't know yet. One week of winter vacation hasn't brought any much clear about change - no real window for something else yet, new and exciting. Patience drills stones like water...