More Post-MeeGo Musing: Community Echoes

Ever since Intel’s MeeGo-cedes-to-Tizen announcement, I’ve been in a slightly unfocused state.  It’s familiar territory– when Maemo was set aside by Nokia for MeeGo, there was the same quandary: what now?  Better yet, what next?

After a little over two years of scant free time, I’m finally working normal hours.  So that liberates me for more community engagement, aka the stuff I really love.  It also frees me up to think.  But looking back on the past 5 years of support for open source projects with great promise but ultimate abandonment, I’m left to wonder what to target. 

Me Tizen, You Join?

Mobile Linux characters have been acting out lately like they were in a bad adventure movie.

Maemo lopes slowly and reluctantly toward its fatal date with the sunset.  MeeGo blinks in the same sun and finds its full commitment gone.  And like a battle-tested Phoenix, Tizen emerges from the ashes of twice-burned, thrice-shy skepticism.

Such is life in the largely undeveloped desert ecosystems outside the expanding stockade walls of Appleworld, Microsoftia and the remaining fading few. 

Getting Down at AppUp Elements 2011

In June of this year I was pleasantly surprised when Intel’s Dawn Foster asked me to join a community panel for AppUp Elements 2011. I’ve been admittedly making only rare appearances in the AppUp community so far but the focus here was on Intel-sponsored communities in general, so if nothing else my MeeGo journey was relevant.

Closer to the event itself, Kira Boyko let me know that a separate talk I had proposed was accepted. More on that… later. 

Confessions of an APPathetic User

I’m going to confess something that’s likely to cost me Twitter followers, kill future career prospects and launch a mild Comment war:

I’m not much of an app user.

And I can’t understand those who are, either.  Well, I can align with the casual user.  The few utilitarians out there.  Those discriminating sorts who reserve their precious device storage space for more valuable content.  Like songs, photos and LOLcats.  

Mobile Computing: What’s in a Name?

source: maemo.nokia.com

Smartphones (aka “converged mobile devices“) have been around in one form or another since 1992.  The moniker itself has elicited snickers and outright derision, but the mobile industry grasped for a good description of where cell phones were headed and this is what stuck.  It still sounds silly, but has defied reason by surviving… but probably only due to lack of a clear competitor.  

Maemo is Dead… Long Live Maemo

Source: http://www.maemoit.org

Before I launch into coverage of the MeeGo Conference in San Francisco this past week, I’d like to touch on a touchy and related issue:  the future of Maemo.

As most readers here are already aware, Maemo was Nokia’s enigmatic attempt at a Linux operating system for mobile devices.  I don’t want to go into the history in this article; it’s easy enough to find on this blog and elsewhere and I want to focus clearly on the future.  

Intel and the Open Ecosystem

I have a confession to make that might not sit well in the AppUp World:

I’m a longtime AMD system builder.

I have to qualify that though.  Eons ago, when I first started assembling my own personal computers, CPU competition was fairly open.  Intel could not keep up with the demand at the time, so they licensed x86 production to various foundries– many that aren’t even around now.  I was a hardware opportunist, scavenging and cannibalizing and repurposing any part I could.  So it didn’t matter if a CPU was made by Intel or AMD or Cyrix or whoever… as long as I could use it, I did.

But over time competitors died or withdrew from that business, and for a while it was pretty much an Intel and AMD world for desktops.  

Meeting up at MIX11

source: blogs.msdn.com

This is going to seem odd coming on the heels of an article covering the 2011 Texas Linux Fest… but bear with me.

When Forum Nokia informed its Champions that we would be granted free access to Microsoft’s 2011 MIX event, I greeted the email with a smile. I understood the motivation: the new partnership between Nokia and Microsoft. But I didn’t know how I would personally fit into the event. Yes, the bulk of my professional experience has been with Microsoft development tools, but more recently I’ve been supporting the open source Maemo and MeeGo communities. Not only that, but there was no way I could come up with the funds for the trip to Las Vegas.  

Blogging at AppUp, too

Intel’s ever-popular Bob Duffy asked me to do some blogging for their AppUp community and even as busy as I am lately, I could not turn down the opportunity.   As I say in my intro there:

Here I’ll narrow it down to mostly MeeGo-specific stuff with some general software development along with relevant hardware topics.  Just about everything will have a heavy community slant.

Bob was gracious enough to let me echo articles over here.   When I do so, I’ll wait a day or so after initially publishing there before republishing here, and also include a reference to the original post.  Note that most of my writing will continue to originate here.

It’s actually funny that I’m doing this for Intel, given that I have been a largely AMD customer for years.  More on that in a future article.

Oh, and Cosimo Kroll has also started writing at AppUp, too, so make sure to check him out as well!

A Tech Ecosystem for the Rest of Us

The choice buzzword since the February 11 Nokia-Microsoft deal (satirically tagged on twitter as #NoWin) is ecosystem.  Stephen Elop’s vision apparently stops short of a Linux-powered mobile solution.  Either the newly-minted Nokia CEO can’t see how to monetize it or thinks it hasn’t happened fast enough for him– pick your choice of pundit assessments here.

The strategy that Nokia had originally described when migrating their Maemo efforts to the joint MeeGo venture with Intel was that the added value for their corporate bottom line would come from a combination of lower internal OS development costs along with a customized user experience on top of the MeeGo core… one that was promised at one point to “knock our socks off”.  Who could reasonably argue with such a concept?

Obviously, Nokia’s board of directors and their recent replacement for Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo.