Council_Update-July_2011

On July 1, 2011, Maemo stands at an interesting crossroads.  In June, Nokia formally announced the N9 Harmattan mobile phone mentioned in Council's previous posting.  Although the stage for the announcement of the device was somewhat awkward, being amongst other marginally related news at the Nokia Connections event in Singapore, the device itself was well presented and showed off the design attributes of the N9 admirably.  A wealth of product information was promptly available online.  Reaction from the general press was positive as well and led to an upswing of anticipation for the phone, which is expected to be released in the next few months.

The device was described at the announcement as the result of Nokia's MeeGo project and is described in specifications as "MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan".  As widely expected, it has a Maemo base ("Harmattan") with a MeeGo API.  From the perspective of application developers and end users alike, the phone appears as a MeeGo handset although that technically may not be correct.  Nevertheless, notwithstanding the lack of technical compliance, the device is widely described as a MeeGo device and hoped to lift the profile of the MeeGo project.  Nokia also initiated much activity surrounding the device at www.meego.com, including threads in the MeeGo forum, to describe aspects of the device.  As first reported in the previous Council posting, the N9 has both a closed mode and an open (developer) mode.  Root access and terminal are available as well.  Nokia also announced the availability of a limited number of N950 developer devices in an attempt to increase the number of apps available for the N9 at launch. 

Nokia made no outreach to maemo.org during the N9 launch.  Although not formally reported as such, Nokia received an "exception" from the Linux Foundation for the N9 and is freely using the meego.com infrastructure to provide community support for the N9.  In addition, it was announced that OBS would include Harmattan as a target and that the community apps repository for MeeGo would include Harmattan apps.  While there is reason for increased optimisim for the future of MeeGo, the relationship between Maemo, Nokia and MeeGo is left somewhat out on a limb.  In an IRC meeting with maemo.org council, new Nokia liaison Matti Arias confirmed that all of Nokia's Maemo/MeeGo related ifs focused on promoting the N9.  Such promotion will not involve maemo.org.