Interesting read: http://www.linux-mag.com/id/7929

This guy makes some good points, but I feel like he is taking one or two negative experiences and applying it to the Meego community as a whole. That being said, downstream cooperation is key to Meego's future and I hope that things improve in that area.

nice reading, unfortunately it doesn't look so good at the moment

I wouldn't hold my breath for MeeGo.

Another year before it hits market (october the soonest); with all the bugs and (lack) of support.

Add another one or two more years for it to become 'competitive' (ie: to build up 3rd party support and libraries to have 'similar' offerings as the competitors).

Actually to get terms right:

Upstream = components that MeeGo use
Downstream = others who use MeeGo as a whole or components

Most of downstream would be people who take the MeeGo platform and build a product (either commercial or open source) using it (productization).

Then there's a subset which is people taking MeeGo components and packaging it into their own distribution. Example could be people taking Hildon components and packaging it up in Debian.

On that article, see my post about MeeGo compliance, to put the discussion mentioned there a bit in perspective.

It boggles my mind that people assume they can use trademarks without permission and then be pissed when the owners say 'no.'. Read about trademarks on wikipedia to get some kind of impression of how difficult a trademark can be to handle right and why a 'no' is needed at times.

Greg KH's comment is weird in many ways. He was questioning every single patch and I've seen Arjan (from Intel kernel maintainer) question the patch submitters himself about if things were upstream or not - so it's not like it's not taken seriously.

The article writer calling it a MeeGo deriative really shows the point of why it was needed to say no, though: What Smeegol is, is OpenSUSE core + MeeGo Netbook UX. MeeGo applications wouldn't work on there. MeeGo deriative would mean well, it would run MeeGo applications and still be MeeGo. In my other post about compliance I show even OpenSUSE has similar policies that is touted as anti-community in the article.

A comparison can be: Debian + skin that looks like Android, called Dandroide. Could be confused with Android, for sure. And how do you think users feel when they discover their Android apps don't work with it?

About the Moblin and Maemo merge. There is one thing developers forget and that is that Maemo was doomed anyway cause of Gtk/Hildon quickhacks in favor of Qt on "nokia handsets".

Some developers forget this and would probadly whine anyway.

But what I not understand is why gtk+ is in the meegocore compliance specs when it is abandoned :-S I mean why is those librarys "a must to be meego compatible" when theyr dished in favour of QT. Atleast ithose libs is not used in handset edition if I am correct!?

I could understand if it was in the some kind of meego netbook editon until the UI is rewritted in qtquick but not in meego core?

But I must agree Meego has alot of problems atm. and many thinks need too get improved. I am following the mailinglists and reading the wiki and sometimes I think we will not see any Meego handset until late 2011 there is so many issues left...

There's a good reason Qt has a mode that uses GTK+ theme engine in order to as look good (or in my personal opinion, as ugly) under GTK+ environments as GTK+ apps such as the netbook UX. That causes a dependancy to gtk+.

And Android continues its march to assimilate nearly all form factors that Meego is going after (regardless of whether Google is actively planning on it).

Here wee go agaimn about Android.

But fact is that Meego atleast has alot better development framework already in place. And with help of QtQuick it seems getting MUCH simpler writing different UI layers depending on formfactor.

Android/Iphone was first done for mobile formfactors only. Then it is "hacked" to get it work on Tablets also...

QtQuick+Meego is working for all formfactors from scratch in case of QtQuick it also works on desktop computers. And I can surely say QtQuick is damn cool technology :-)

Meego+QtQuick will compete with Android in the future.

I fully agree with Meego taking a tough stance on compliance/trademarking. If any old distro is allowed to use the Meego name, then the experience will be inconsistent and flawed from a UX perspective. For Meego to build its brand, every measure needs to be taken to make sure quality products make it to market (and soon).