Community Highlights for February 2009

Well, I was a bit optimistic about keeping up with the bi-monthly updates, so I'm switching to a monthly format. Unfortunately there'll be more time between updates, but the updates will be longer and will (hopefully) be on time.

debmaster

As many of you might have noticed, we have a new debmaster. Please give a warm welcome to Jeremiah Foster. He'll be working to implement new autobuilder and Extras improvements, and helping developers to improve the overall quality of Maemo packages. Many thanks to Nokia for facilitating another maemo.org position. Especially in these hard economic times.

Maemo Summit 2009

Andrea Grandi was kind enough to kick off the discussion for the 2009 Maemo Summit. The discussion is taking place on maemo-community if anyone is interested in joining in. Progress from this discussion can be tracked on the wiki page.

Mer

Mer has just released 0.8. The new release brings many improvements to usability and stability, as well as improved N810 support, easier application installation. This release is also shipping with Extras enabled, offering application developers the opportunity to test their applications on Mer. Details are available from the wiki and discussion is on itT.

Fremantle SDK

The Fremantle pre-alpha SDK has been updated. This new release includes the new Media Application Framework (MAFW), the newly-open sourced DSME, Upstart, and an BusyBox that will be developed in the open from here on out.

This release is still primarily only of interest to platform developers, as the APIs are still unfrozen and it is still using the Diablo UI. This is the last pre-alpha release, and the first alpha release should be forthcoming soon.

Fremantle Stars

From the list generated by the community, Nokia has selected several community applications to be featured in Fremantle. Nokia will be providing support to these applications and their developers to help make them ready for prime-time by the time Fremantle is released.

maemo.org redesign

The work to redesign the maemo.org website is still ongoing. The graphics and layouts are just being finalized, and the implementation will begin in earnest soon. Anyone interested in following the progress closely should subscribe to maemo-community.