Neo900:

I hope that it succeeds. I myself have donated in hopes of buying two of them.

I have, of course, seen the friction between one of the Neo900 project leads and members of the maemo community. It is concerning, as the Neo900 has good potential in revitalizing interest in maemo. Not only that, based on the experiences of OpenPandora, open-source hardware is not easy to pull off successfully--cooperation would seem more optimal than antagonism, on the face of it.

I think we do have to respect Joerg's wishes if he does not want to cooperate directly with the community. But since many members of our community (including me) are still interested in seeing the Neo900 succeed, we still can support development indirectly: by encouraging development discussion on the board, and by sponsoring coding competitions et al, with categories that also target development that is Neo900 specific. (The same can also be said for Diablo and Jolla).

Jolla:

My view of Jolla, in many ways, is similar to that of the Neo900 project. I hope they succeed.

I myself have not purchased a Jolla, primarily because the device does not support the 3G/LTE bands in use in my home country. However, I will certainly be interested if the next iteration of a Jolla phone does support my country's 3G networks. The ports of Sailfish to various Android devices show promise--I would give it a try if/when some of these ports become mature enough for an end user.

Finally, I have seen some friction between Jolla and members of the community. Similar to the Neo900, just because we do not have official sanction does not mean we should discourage communication or interest in Sailfish. A good percentage of maemo/meego users have moved to Sailfish and still use TMO as their "home base" for discussion. Even for folks who are not interested in using Sailfish, we should still encourage talk and development: oftentimes, development on one platform confers benefits for the others (note the several developers who provide fremantle, harmattan, and sailfish versions of their applications).