I originally started this blog for one reason: I felt that I needed to communicate the strategies we were executing especially in the area of open source. I was responsible for the most part of it at Nokia, and I thought you wanna hear it from me. Thank you for all the feed back. All of it!

From the early days of Nokia 770 everything has changed. We did turn the company around and put both open source and MeeGo into the center of Nokia. We released Nokia's first Linux and open source based smartphone, the Nokia N900, and participated the creation of the Maemo community. We then joined forces with Intel and others and created MeeGo operations to continue that work we started. And my dear colleagues and community members continue doing that. It will be a great success!

But I moved on. I started at HP / Palm 3 days ago. I'm exited and thrilled about this opportunity. I've always been a great fan of webOS and I'm now proud to be a part of this great team. One of the first things I did even before joining was to install and try out the SDK. I was impressed to see how easily I got started with it!

I do not know yet what are my future needs for communicating through this channel. Palm seems to have good publicity actions going on, such as developer days and sites. But we will see .... talk to you soon!

1.2. You should have it tomorrow the latest.

In a nutshell,

- The world's first phone with Skype video calls
- Google and SIP video calls, too
- Other stuff like browser, exchange, browser etc improvements
- Qt 4.6 for developers ... this is very important. This now bridges us to the forthcoming MeeGo apps that will then run also on you N900.

So with all the above, with full Flash, Mozilla browser, and a lot of cool apps at Nokia OVI store and Maemo repositories, a very compelling little computer. And a phone, too.

More info here.

I've been working with software, computers, user interfaces and all that since late 80s. I've seen interesting development and several paradigm shifts happening. But I feel that we are in the middle of the most significant one!

I finally got back home from the Linux Foundation summit where I gave a keynote. We are now building both the platform and devices, and we need to keep the following things clear on our mind:

MeeGo project is making progress. We opened the MeeGo distribution infrastructure and the operating system base. It is not on official or tested release, but the opening of the public development of the MeeGo OS layer. So, it is an invitation for hackers who want to participate in MeeGo development, not for end users ;-)

If you consider yourself a developer, go and check it out. You can run it on an Nokia N900, and on an Intel Atom based laptop or handset.

If you study the code closer you can also see how we are merging Moblin and Maemo projects. Moblin contributed things such as the entire OpenSuse based build infrastructure, geoCLue location framework, PcakageKit, Connman etc. Maemo contributed things such as Telepathy for Internet communication, Tracker for user and metadata management, Maemo multimedia application framework, Qt toolkit etc. And, as we know, a big part of Moblin and Maemo were already the same.

And, by the way, our team within Nokia was called Maemo Devices. We are now MeeGo Devices. Same guys. Bigger ambitions!

P.S.

As explained, N900 is used as one of the platforms for MeeGo development. I do not have any news about the actual Nokia products running MeeGo. We will tell about the products separately.

In-flight entertainment with N900

Greetings from the Nokia party here in Barcelona. I'm blogging on my N900 which really makes me the geek of the party!

MeeGo is the next step fro Maemo. Natural evolution. Gets us much wider adoption. So it is not at all about forgetting Maemo. It is about merging most significant open source mobile projects together.

Nokia roadmap will be accelerated. Maemo6 plans have not changed. We are workingd days and nights to get it out.It will be Qt based and MeeGo compatible.

We will absolutely not forget N900 users and developers. If you are a developer, develop on N900 with Qt and your apps will run on MeeGo devices. If you are an N900 owner (or an owner wannabee) this is all good for you. All the MeeGo and Qt momentum will give you many more interesting applications to run on N900. Now and in the future.

We’ve been busy with our friends @ Intel.

We decided to expand the relationship we started already last spring. We merge Maemo and Moblin projects into one single project called MeeGo. MeeGo is an open software platform – an operating system – for a wide range of devices. It’ll run on X86 and on Arm based hardware. It will be developed as an open project hosted by the Linux Foundation.

So what does it mean? Many things.


Joint development

We will merge Maemo and Moblin projects. Their architecture is already very similar. They share many components but sometimes use different versions. But they build and integrate releases independently. And while Maemo is for ARM, Moblin is for X86. Now we merge them to get the best of both. A good Moblin build and integration, Maemo’s mobile optimizations and ARM support, Qt etc. We can also now make the bright engineers of Intel and Nokia to work close together.


And even more. I invite all active Moblin and Maemo community members to now join the MeeGo project. It’ll give you all a much bigger pond to swim in. And it’ll get your work into much wider use than either of these projects separately.


Freedom

MeeGo is free. Code will be available for everybody under proper open source licenses. No strings attached other than making your contributions also free. The development and integration will be open, too. Everybody can invest in MeeGo and participate. It is a genuine open source project. Free for everybody to participate, contribute, and enjoy. Free. No papers to sign. Just show up!


Compatibility

MeeGo offers the broadest possible compatibility for application developers. It uses Qt as the framework and toolset for application developers. It means very good tools and possibility to run your apps in a wide range of devices. Code once – deploy everywhere.


MeeGo also means compatibility and full compliance with leading open source projects. We will not fork projects if we can possibly avoid it. We will work with leading open source projects using the open source best practices.


A perfect target

MeeGo will aim high. Nokia and Intel are the biggest investors in mobile Linux based technologies and now – together—even more significant. We will put all our force behind making MeeGo THE operating system.


So, for chip-set companies, hardware vendors, software companies, application developers, device manufactures, operators … this is the place to go. Make you stuff work under, inside, or on top of MeeGo and you get your stuff deployed all over the place. Nokia will ship tons of MeeGo devices, Intel, too. And others will use MeeGo in their devices. It is open, free, powerful and compatible.


Devices

So what’s with Maemo6? Maemo6 will be MeeGo compatible.....consider Maemo6 already a MeeGo instance.


So aim at MeeGo. We will!

Some people are questioning Maemo as an application development platform. I claim that it is one of Maemo's strong points going forward.

We have always had a strong and productive maemo.org community that builds very interesting stuff. Their work has been available for more advanced Maemo users already for some time. I claim that the depth and coolness of those apps and compos beats almost any other mobile platform. Maemo is open and as a true computer OS it allows developers to create really nice applications, widgets, and extensions. If you want to experience them just open disabled repositories or go directly to maemo.org.

And now, Ovi Store for Maemo applications has been open for a week or two. It is the official Nokia supported application store where developers can distribute their work. You should defenately check it out.

Angry Birds is one of the many applications you can install to your N900 from the Ovi Store. This is what the developers of that entertaining game say: " In the first week that Angry Birds has been on the Ovi Store, it has been downloaded almost as many times as the iPhone version in six weeks. Given that most N900 users have not even used Ovi Store yet, we are confident that there will be many more downloads in the months to come, and are sure that the N900 version will be very profitable."

I suggest you read the whole interview and go to the Ovi Store with your N900. Get your apps there, too. And have fun!

When we started Maemo 5 we said: let's make the world's best pocketable computer, that is also a good phone! That is exactly what we've managed to do. And this is my vision of the future, too.

My impression is that if you read reviews and blogs, all of those that start with "Internet", "Computer", "Multimedia", "Networking" or any other such terms love N900. They think it's the best device out there. Those, who think it primarily just as a phone have more concerns.

Just as we planned! The best browser ever, the best conversation view, the best social network integration, very good camera & imaging capabilities, good multimedia support --- and a crips and well working mobile phone. And -- as a true computer- open and upgradeable by end users:

• Two firmware updates within a week. Over the air. Some glitches, mostly going well!
• Application store with good stuff in it
• MMS implementation coming in as an open source project (Frals, cool!!!).
• In addition to basic applications, a lot of other very integrated features, such as the Firefox browser, MSN and other IM plugins, codecs etc available as downloadables. Demonstrates the power of a true open Linux computer!
• + many so interesting apps ... hundreds already ....

Not bad, eh?

It's Friday afternoon and I'm still in a phone conference, as you can see in the picture below. I'm in a phone conf (on mute, of course) and on my Facebook at the same time -- and a card game going on ..... this late in Friday, I felt that I needed to post and brag a bit about it ;-)