Nokia's funding for maemo.org is ending: call for donations

Council member, Joerg Reisenweber has announced a need for donations to keep all of maemo.org running as Nokia step back from support: "I have to inform all of you that we're approaching a critical date for all of us: Nokia is about to stop funding our infrastructure and board and council are busy to establish a new set of servers to run all the bits we need to continue with our daily maemo-life. First impact is on this very forum, which we need to either move to a new server until end of the year, or as a last resort find some 500 bucks to buy one more month of operation on the old one, until we established the move end of January then. There are other expenses the board is facing right now to ensure a smooth continuation of services like repositories, wiki, whatnot else."

Nokia supporting Hildon Foundation in ecosystem infrastructure move

The Hildon Foundation Board made a surprising and welcome announcement last week, notifying the community that Nokia has offered to cover the costs of migration for maemo.org: "In a conference held by Nokia, Nemein and the Hildon Foundation, Nokia has offered to help economically in the process of migration. The details for starting the migration are under discussion. Nokia is already working with the Hildon Foundation in a legal document to cover the transferring process of maemo.org assets. While this document is being reviewed and completed, the migration process of services should take place during the month of December."

Details are still being discussed, but so far Nokia will cover the costs of the migration and of new hardware for the site. Funding for hosting costs at Nemein will need to be covered by the foundation beginning in 2013.

In this edition (Download)...

1. Front Page
   • Nokia supporting Hildon Foundation in ecosystem infrastructure move
2. Development
   • Port Qt apps from MeeGo to BlackBerry 10 to potentially get $10,000
3. Community
   • Council meeting minutes from 23rd November

Nokia supporting Hildon Foundation in ecosystem infrastructure move

The Hildon Foundation Board made a surprising and welcome announcement last week, notifying the community that Nokia has offered to cover the costs of migration for maemo.org: "In a conference held by Nokia, Nemein and the Hildon Foundation, Nokia has offered to help economically in the process of migration. The details for starting the migration are under discussion. Nokia is already working with the Hildon Foundation in a legal document to cover the transferring process ofmaemo.org assets. While this document is being reviewed and completed, the migration process of services should take place during the month of December."

Details are still being discussed, but so far Nokia will cover the costs of the migration and of new hardware for the site. Funding for hosting costs at Nemein will need to be covered by the foundation beginning in 2013.

In this edition (Download)...

1. Front Page
   • Nokia supporting Hildon Foundation in ecosystem infrastructure move
2. Development
   • Port Qt apps from MeeGo to BlackBerry 10 to potentially get $10,000
3. Community
   • Council meeting minutes from 23rd November

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.

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.

In this edition (Download)...

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

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.

In this edition (Download)...

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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).

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.

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

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.

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