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Jolla reveal strategy, UI and Qt Creator-based SDK at Slush 2012

Jolla is once again foremost in the minds of many mobile OS enthusiasts and open-source aficionados with more information being revealed regarding their strategy and future. The launch of their official website and a slick video partway between a teaser and a product video give a definite sense of progress and should inspire confidence in everyone holding their breath for a product launch.

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Open Letter from the Hildon Foundation Board

The newly elected Hildon Foundation Board have published an open letter to the community about the direction they have started to take. "At this point, the first Board meeting minutes have been published for public review. As we hope you'll see, it is nothing but the Maemo Community's best interests that we are concerned with. In fact, the entire reason for the Hildon Foundation to exist is so that the" The encouraging opening continues into a bit of the history behind the community starting with the community council and describing where the Hildon Foundation Board fits into the picture. The board maintains its roots, stating it will conduct business in "an open source manner" both in the board-specific meetings and communication with the community.

Read more (maemo.org)

In this edition (Download)...

1. Front Page
   • Open Letter from the Hildon Foundation Board
2. Community
   • UK Qt meetup in Birmingham this evening

Front Page

Getting Android Dalvik "Hello world" app running on Harmattan

Thomas Perl has been working on getting Android applications to run from within Harmattan using the Dalvik VM from Nitdroid. Thomas gives detailed instructions on how this was acheived and shows an example program running. He mentions in the comments that he is not really interested in taking the idea any further at this point, but gives some starting points in case someone wants to pick it up. The terms "chroot," "reflash," and "brick" are thrown around from time-to-time, so be sure you understand the risks and know what you are doing before you try this at home.

Read more (thpmaemo.blogspot.co.uk)

In this edition (Download)...

1. Front Page
   • Getting Android Dalvik "Hello world" app running on Harmattan
2. Community
   • qwazix running for Community Council

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Hildon Foundation Board election results

The results of the inaugural Hildon Foundation Board election were released last week. The new 3-member board (which includes one of MWKN's own: Tim Samoff) will serve a one year term. Congratulations to your new Hildon Foundation Board!: "Winners are Ivan Galvez Junquera (ivgalvez), Randall Arnold (Texrat), and Tim Samoff (timsamoff)."

The election of the board marks the beginning of maemo.org's transition to an independent entity from Nokia as funding for maemo.org will come to a close at the end of the year. The new board will act as the governing body for the legal entity (Hildon Foundation) that will be taking over control of maemo.org. The new board members are in for a tough job. The staff of MWKN, being familiar with the sorts of challenges they're likely to face, wishes them good luck.

Read more (maemo.org)

Proposed "release candidate" for non-profit Hildon Foundation by-laws

With maemo.org's service contract coming to a close at the end of the year, Nokia's support of the community will end. In a response to this, a non-profit organization, the Hildon Foundation, is being formed to take over operation of maemo.org and its services. The by-laws for the foundation have been undergoing a long process of writing and re-writing over the past two months, and Craig Woodward posted the latest revision to the proposed by-laws on Talk: "Attached find the next (possibly last?) proposed revision of the bylaws. There are several small changes (capitalization, word changes, typo fixes), and one major change around what happens with elections when nominees die or withdraw their nomination. [...] Please review these and get comments in fast!"

With the Hildon Foundation Board election results posted, the new board will likely be voting on the by-laws within the next week or two. Anyone interested in reviewing them before they're instated should do so as soon as possible.

Read more (talk.maemo.org)

In this edition (Download)...

1. Front Page
   • Hildon Foundation Board election results
   • Proposed "release candidate" for non-profit Hildon Foundation by-laws
2. Development
   • Get involved in single public transport app to rule them all
3. Community
   • A Hildon Foundation Board Rules of Engagement proposal
4. Announcements
   • Android OpenGL ES game compatibility environment for Harmattan and Fremantle

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Non-profit board elections underway, council nominations re-opened

The election for the Hildon Foundation Board opened this past week on Friday (October 12th) and will run through Thursday October 18th 2012, 23:59 UTC. For the board elections: "Due to Nokia's state, its funding for maemo.org in 2013 is uncertain. The community is working on bylaws for a new legal entity (currently with the working title “Hildon Foundation”) that can legally inherit the domain name or have donations (monetary, hardware and/or data) from Nokia, the current providers, and community members, which can be used to continue operation of resources vital to the community. The bylaws are currently in discussion, and will be formalized shortly. The initial Board for the Foundation will be elected parallel to, and with the same election rules and requirements as, those currently established for Council elections. It is expected that the Board elected for this new entity will adopt the community's desired bylaws and be ready to take the reigns as soon as the entity is ready for operation."

The nomination period for the Maemo Community Council has been extended through Sunday October 28th, 23:59 UTC. Voting for council will take place from November 2nd through the 8th.

Read more (maemo.org)
Read more (maemo.org)
Read more (talk.maemo.org)

In this edition (Download)...

1. Front Page
   • Non-profit board elections underway, council nominations re-opened
2. In the Wild
   • The Story of Nokia MeeGo
   • Samsung to merge bada with TIZEN

Front Page

Jolla to unveil Mer-based Sailfish OS and developer story next month

Last week Jolla announced it will be unveiling its new Sailfish OS, Jolla UI, and SDK at the Slush startup conceference in Helsinki November 21st and 22nd: "The startup, which is comprised of many former Nokia employees, said it will also discuss the Jolla SDK and app ecosystem with developers. 'Device information, ID and expected availability' will be announced before Christmas, it added. 'I’m thrilled to finally be able to show the user interface we have been working on, and it will be exciting to open the developer story with SDK and applications to the public,' said Jussi Hurmola, CEO of Jolla, in a statement."

The reveal of the platform and developer story will be the first major non-business announcement from Jolla, and will give developers a more meaningful picture of what the application story will look like for the platform. The reveal of the Jolla-specific UI differentiation will be our first look at what Jolla's "all new" UI will look like. The release of the SDK will hopefully drum up some excitement for the platform, and it will be interesting to see what sort of information the community manages to dig out about the hardware platform (an endeavor the Maemo community is very familiar with).

Read more (techcrunch.com)

Jolla brands Mer-based MeeGo offshoot ecosystem as "Sailfish"

Last week, Jolla announced the formation of a strategic platform alliance around the newly-branded Mer-based Sailfish platform: "Finnish smartphone start-up Jolla will build a new mobile alliance which will license the MeeGo-based mobile operating system to other device manufacturers and service developers beginning spring 2013, according to Jolla CEO Jussi Hurmola. According to Hurmola, Jolla is currently building up a new 200 million euro mobile alliance based in Hong Kong, China. In the core of the alliance is the MeeGo based mobile operating system which Jolla calls "Sailfish"." No partners have been announced, and the €200 million isn't a particularly large number, but it will be exciting to see what sort of interest it manages to generate.

Read more (talouselama.fi)

In this edition (Download)...

1. Front Page
   • Jolla to unveil Mer-based Sailfish OS and developer story next month
   • Jolla brands Mer-based MeeGo offshoot ecosystem as "Sailfish"
2. Development
   • Updated FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace) for Maemo 5
3. Community
   • Logs from latest Maemo Community Council meeting

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Management not-for-profit board and Community Council nomination period closes

The nomination period for the two concurrent elections have closed. The new "not-for-profit" organisation which will take over community ownership duties from Nokia has had six candidates declare their intention to stand:

* Randall Arnold

* Niel Nielsen

* Ivan Galvez Junquera

* Joerg Reisenweber

* Tim Samoff

* Craig Woodward.

There are three candidates for the Community Council, so they could replace the current council without the need for an election:

* Niel Nielsen

* Ivan Galvez Junquera

* Joerg Reisenweber

Si Howard is also standing for both bodies, but does not currently have a sufficient karma score; so is ineligible.

Read more (wiki.maemo.org)

In this edition (Download)...

1. Front Page
   • Management not-for-profit board and Community Council nomination period closes
2. Applications
   • Dooble (WebKit-based browser) ported to Nokia N900 and N9
3. Development
   • Recreating Maemo 5 SDK virtual image development environment
   • Getting web2py apps working on Android devices
4. Community
   • DocScrutinizer running for Maemo Community Council and Hildon Foundation Board
   • Woody14619 running for Hildon Foundation Board
   • ivgalvez re-running for Maemo Community Council and standing for Hildon Foundation Board
   • ...and 3 more
5. Announcements
   • gPodder updates for Maemo and MeeGo
   • Gallery plugins for Nokia N9 for visual effects
   • BackupMenu comes to N9 and N950 (open mode required)
   • Instago: Instagram viewer for Harmattan

Front Page

Hildon Foundation Board nominations

Randall Arnold has put forth his candidancy for the upcoming Hildon Foundation Board election. Randall is a 3-term past council member with a long history of community involvement. Part of Randall's announcment stated: "I've been very concerned with the negative tone I see permeating our community" Randall joins Tim Samoff as the candidates who have declared so far.

Read more (maemo.org)
Read more (wiki.maemo.org)

New version of open source flasher (0xFFFF) for Maemo devices released

The Open Free Fiasco Firmware Flasher (0xFFFF) has long been the only open source alternative to Nokia's own FIASCO flasher. Last week Pali Rohár announced a new release: "Now after 4 years new version 0.5 of Open Free Fiasco Firmware Flasher 0xFFFF was released. It is only bug fix release which fixing generating and unpacking Fiasco images used on Nokia N900." Pali is rewriting the next version for better FIASCO image handling and additional protocol support (eMMC, cold flashing). The current release is available from his website, and the source is on git.

Read more (maemo.org)
Read more (nopcode.org)
Read more (github.com)

In this edition (Download)...

1. Front Page
   • Hildon Foundation Board nominations
   • New version of open source flasher (0xFFFF) for Maemo devices released

Front Page

Tim Samoff running for Hildon Foundation board

On Saturday, the nomination period for the Maemo Community Council and (new) Hildon Foundation board opened. Running for two weeks, before elections to both bodies are held, Tim is the first to throw his hat into the ring:

"While I haven't been interested in taking part in Council business over the last couple of years, I am still very interested in seeing the advancement of (and even helping to steer) the community into the future. I don't see a lot of hope for Maemo as a specific "product" of any sort (which, in the end, may end up disqualifying me from running for this position), but I am still very hopeful for the community at large. Maemo is more than just a product anyway, it's a philosophy. And, more than any other open source community that I've been involved with, Maemo community members are the most transparent, dedicated, and involved in the life of that philosophy."

Tim has been a member of the Maemo and MeeGo communities from almost the outset, and served on the council three times; each time with your editor - an experience that was extremely positive.

Read more (maemo.org)
Read more (mwkn.net)

In this edition (Download)...

1. Front Page
   • Tim Samoff running for Hildon Foundation board
2. Applications
   • Amazon Kindle reader app for Nokia N9 now called "Erudite", improved offline usage
3. Development
   • Windows 8/Metro-style QML components (demoed on Harmattan, works on BlackBerry PlayBook)
   • Beta of Qt Creator 2.6.0, with Android & QNX support, but drops Symbian
4. Announcements
   • Klippr - N9 client for link organiser, kippit.com

Front Page

Upcoming Maemo Community Council and Hildon Foundation board member elections

Craig Woodward, current chair of the Community Council, has announced that the council will be curtailing their term (slightly) to have an election

"While it's been just over 5 months, the current Council feels that due to timing considerations the next Community Council elections are due at this time. [...] This year there are two elections to be run in parallel."

"COUNCIL MEMBERS - The council is a body of volunteers taken from the Maemo community that acts as a focal point for the community. [...] The role of Council will continue to be as it was before, as a group to work with the Community, and act as a focal point for communication with group in charge of services needed by the community to continue, whomever that turns out to be."

"BOARD MEMBERS- Due to Nokia's state, its funding for maemo.org in 2013 is uncertain. The community is working on bylaws for a new legal entity (currently with the working title “Hildon Foundation”) that can legally inherit the domain name or have donations (monetary, hardware and/or data) from Nokia."

Obviously both elected groups will have to work closely together, and the creation of the "Hildon Foundation" will fundamentally change the nature of maemo.org. They are, therefore, crucial elections to follow and participate in (whether by questioning candidates, nominating people, standing yourself, or just plain voting).

Nominations open from next Saturday (15th September) and run for two weeks.

There is more discussion on the TMO thread linked to from the bottom of the blog post.

Read more (maemo.org)

Videos and slides from Devaamo Hack Day

Videos of the presentations given at the weekend's Devaamo "Hack Day" have been posted. The event had

"The response on Twitter was positive, so those with interest in seeing more about Mer, Nemo Mobile or Jolla should watch."

Read more (devaamo.fi)

In this edition (Download)...

1. Front Page
   • Upcoming Maemo Community Council and Hildon Foundation board member elections
   • Videos and slides from Devaamo Hack Day
2. Applications
   • Easy Chroot/Debian for Harmattan
3. Development
   • Setting up a development target for Nemo Mobile and Mer development
   • Assistance available for those interested in porting Qt apps to BlackBerry & BB10
4. Community
   • Meeting between Nemein and Community Council about maemo.org handover
5. Devices
   • Leaked Nokia "Lauta" shows keyboarded version of N9 - i.e. production version of N950
6. In the Wild
   • "Unique" Lumia apps already existed in MeeGo
   • Nokia apologise for "confusion" caused by new adverts being "not shot with a Lumia 920"