back to article MeeGo and the Great Betrayal Myths of tech history

Nokia's first MeeGo phone is amazing - why did they chuck MeeGo away? So say Linux fanbois distraught after Stephen Elop turned Nokia's future platform into a rolling skunkworks project. They've started a petition. It's got 287 signatories. "Reality denial" doesn't even begin to sum it up. The N9 does look quite slick, …

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  1. Marco van de Voort
    Go

    OS/2

    I always had the feeling OS/2 failed as much on memory requirements than on apps.

    Microsoft hasn't inserted two other Windows lines (16-bit Windows 3.x and 16/32 hybrid Windows 9x) before OS/2's sister NT was made the only Windows version.

    In short, OS/2 was too early, and IBM didn't have a decent transition horse.

    1. SImon Hobson Bronze badge

      Beat me to it ...

      Yes, one of the reasons OS/2 failed was that it was too advanced for the time and the then current hardware wasn't up to running it. This made it an expensive option back in the days when RAM was still often measured by the 1/4MByte (256kbyte) ! Never mind that so many Windows boxes were run with so little ram that they thrashed swap most of the time.

      Another tiny detail is that at the time MS had their illegal contracts in place that meant if you bought a PC then it came with Windows wether you liked it or not, and so OS/2 was an *extra* purchase, not an alternative purchase.

      1. Alan Bourke

        Illegal contracts?

        Astute business sense I think.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          That is what they were convicted of

          MS was convicted of illegal business practices

      2. Khephren

        To much of a hog.

        to advanced for the time' equates with badly written to run on machines of that time it was designed for. Other manufacturers ran GUI OS's just fine on machines with little ram.

        1. Paul M 1

          Title

          Yeah but at least you could format floppy disks all day while still being able to use the machine!

    2. Andrew Orlowski (Written by Reg staff)

      Re: OS/2

      OS/2 developer kits were £3,000 - Microsoft practically gave the Windows dev tools away.

      1. TheOldBear
        Big Brother

        Countering the Ministry of Truth

        Back in 1989 The _Microsoft_ OS/2 2.0 developer kit was $2600. That was the official dev kit for both the IBM and Microsoft developer community.

        In 1990, just before the 'divorce' MS was still encouraging developers to target OS/2 2.x and showing previews of OS/2 NT [written in C instead of assembler was it's big feature]. WordPerfect was one of the companies caught in the trap, investing in a native OS/2 version.

        In 1991, IBM's OS/2 developer kit was part of a $100 / year annual subscription - and several third party compilers were released.

        In 1992 Microsoft's version of OS/2 still had the old program manager / file manager interface, looking just like Windows 2.1 or MS OS/2 1.2

        Also in 1992, IBM released their OS/2 2.0 [on 26 floppies] featuring the document oriented 'Workplace Shell'

        In 1993 Microsoft renamed the OS/2 3.0 project to Windows NT, and also stated it was a fashionable 'microkernal' based OS. The promise of multiple API personalities had Bill the Gates proclaim "NT is UNIX, in six months it will be the most popular UNIX'. Needless to say, NT was not and is not UNIX [even the fossil POSIX subset api layer has been deleted]

        1. Andrew Orlowski (Written by Reg staff)

          Re: Countering the Ministry of Truth

          There's little point in posting incorrect dates and facts when you can check them on Google in a couple of seconds.

          "In 1992 Microsoft's version of OS/2 still had the old program manager / file manager interface, looking just like Windows 2.1 or MS OS/2 1.2"

          Microsoft was still selling the old 16-bit OS/2 Lan Manager and would continue to sell it well into the mid-90s. Relevance?

          "In 1993 Microsoft renamed the OS/2 3.0 project to Windows NT"

          Nope. See InfoWorld January 21 1991:

          "Microsoft is preparing to announce a 32-bit version of the Windows package - one that will obviate the need for OS/2 for many users... Microsoft said last fall the first completely 32-bit version of OS/2, which has alternately called 3.X and 'NT' (for New Technology) would run Windows applications"

          and InfoWorld July 8 1991:

          "Microsoft has veered away from OS/2 and will ship next year Windows NT, its 32-bit New Technology operating system, with only Windows and DOS programming interfaces, the company confirmed last week. The company began shifting gears on its committment to OS/2 last summer on the heels of the explosive growth of Windows 3.0. Previously, Microsoft said the New Technology (NT) kernel would be the core component of OS/2 3.0 - a pure 32-bit version of OS/2 that would run code written for DOS, 16- and 32-bit Windows, and 16- and 32-bit OS/2...

          ... in January, Microsoft broadly hinted it was leaning toward abandoning its OS/2 path"

        2. fch

          as much as I like someone countering the ministry ...

          ... counter them correctly please.

          OS/2 2.0 didn't come on 26 floppies - it came on two. As did the compiler / IDE. I still have those, though I've got no idea whether they're still readable, nor haven't owned a floppy drive for over half a decade. If anyone collects, pls contact me.

        3. Richard Plinston

          [on 26 floppies]

          Prior to one release of OS/2 the MS dirty tricks department went to the floppy disk manufacturers and bought the complete next 6 months production. They had warehouses full of floppys for years afterwards but it created shortages of OS/2 that massively hurt sales.

          Later OS/2 incorporated a version of Windows 3.x. IBM had royalty free rights to do this, but only for shipping versions of Windows. IBM was restricted by anti-trust to pre-announce no more than 3 months ahead.

          MS announced Windows 3.1 (or 3.11 I forget which) would be available on a certain date. IBM built this into OS/2 and announced it. MS held up shipping until the 3 months had elapsed. IBM had to ship OS/2 and had to revert to the old version or Windows. MS shipped the new one, job done.

          1. Marvin the Martian
            Stop

            MS bought the world floppy production for 6months

            [reference needed]

            1. Andrew Orlowski (Written by Reg staff)

              Re: MS bought the world floppy production for 6months

              They also bought up every use of the number "2" for a year - which hit OS/_ and PS/_ and the 199_ Barcelona Olympics very hard.

              No, really.

          2. fixit_f

            Seriously?

            I'd never heard that trick with buying up the floppy disks. I can't find any reference to it on google?

      2. TeeCee Gold badge
        FAIL

        Re: Re: OS/2

        Typical. Absobloodylutely typical.

        Insane pricing, ensuring that early adopters and evaluators were put off, was one of the most significant nails in the coffin of OS/2. When it originally shipped, it cost an arm and a leg as desktop OS's went at the time. Then you found out that Presentation Manager (the GUI) was an "optional extra" that cost more than the core OS did. If you jumped that hurdle you then found that, if you wanted it to talk to anything else, Comms Manager was also required.........

        Many did what I did. I lobbed the copy we bought for evaluation into the bin when I found how much extra wonga was required to convert "DOS that doesn't work" into "candidate future GUI desktop OS". If it hadn't been for that, being an IBM shop I reckon we might have taken the OS/2 route. As it was we ended up going GUI with Win 3 like everyone else.

      3. fch

        OS/2 developer kit prices ...

        ... were slashed with OS/2 2.0; the 3k figure might've been the case for the 1.x releases (they used MS C, which even for Windows had a four-figure pricetag at the time). I bought the whole set (OS/2 2.0, IBM compiler / workbench IDE) for about 400 DM in 1992. Maybe some components were missing in that I don't remember; it was cheaper than a Win3.1 plus MS Quick C license at that time, so became best choice for the fresher I was then.

        Well, till Linux changed the picture a few months later. Could've saved myself the 400 Mark had I known. Hindsight's 20:20 ;-)

    3. jake Silver badge

      OS/2 failed as a mass-market OS because ...

      IBM chose not to roll the Windows 3.0 API into it ... *probably* because Apple had a hissy-fit at the very idea. Am I the only one who remembers Taligent and Pink? The concept of Apple and IBM dating sounds daft these days, but back in the late eighties ...

      As a side-note, OS/2 isn't actually dead. I still use it in some places. See:

      http://ecomstation.com/

    4. Charlie Clark Silver badge

      The short version

      IBM was getting stiffed by Microsoft for years before the split: IBM stupidly paid Microsoft to develop OS/2 for them and tried to marry it to the PS/2 line for too long. Despite the undoubted technical superiority of the microchannel architecture it was as much this strategy as anything else that put people off OS/2. In the medium term the customer lost out with the crappy VESA local bus but it was so cheap and we got sucked into the Wintel spiral of despair.

      Memory requirements, providing you were running the unfortunately single-threaded Presentation Manager, weren't that bad and you pre-emptive multitasking, a fast file system with support for extensible metadata and peripheral sharing and a kernel you couldn't kill. This is why OS/2 was used in all kinds of embedded devices such as UPS tracking pads. The banks loved it, of course, because it had wonderful terminal emulation. Later on it ran Windows better than Windows - virtual machines known as DOS boxes with more memory than DOS could handle on it's own but this just encouraged more Windows development.

      I do remember Lou Gerstner saying something* like he thought OS/2 could win the wars but it wasn't worth the cost. IBM then concentrated on making more money from Windows than Microsoft and bought Lotus and others. The companies who stuck with OS/2 seemed to have to spend less on system upgrades over the next ten years because they were able to do so much with the hardware.

      * Source OS/2 Inside, I think.

  2. Richard 12 Silver badge

    It's all pretty much irrelevant now

    Meego might or might not have run a set of amazing smartphones - however it is really aimed at the generic smart device market rather than specifically phones. There are quite a few Meego devices, most of them go inside cars.

    Symbian did run a lot of good smartphones and featurephones.

    Symbian is dead and buried, Meego lives on at Intel.

    Windows Phone 7 was very nearly dead in the water before it even launched due to the association with Windows Mobile 6.x, and has received several cuts due to apparent MS incompetence. (I say 'apparent' because it's quite likely much of that is down to the operators rather than MS directly.)

    So really, Nokia are on an extremely-high-risk path - for Nokia to survive, both MS and Nokia have to get their act together quickly enough to produce some feature-rich and *perfect* WP7 phones before the customers all move elsewhere.

    If there is any smell of the Windows Mobile problems there at all, Nokia will fail.

    If they fail to integrate perfectly with Outlook and IMAP, Nokia will fail. (Oh dear - WP7 currently doesn't sync to Outlook....)

    However, if WP7 fails, Microsoft won't.

    That's the basic problem here - Nokia have tied themselves to a brand-new, unproven ship made by a company with a history of ships that sink. Unfortuantely for Nokia, the captain of that new ship doesn't really care all that much, and is very well insured should it sink.

    1. Spearchucker Jones
      FAIL

      WTF?

      WP7 does sync with Outlook. Using either Exchange or Windows Live.

      1. xenny

        WTF!

        Not everyone uses Outlook with Exchange/Live. Hence WP7 doesn't sync with Outlook. It does sync with some Mail servers that Outlook syncs with.

        1. Richard 12 Silver badge

          Exactly!

          There's a lot of people who use the Outlook client with a generic POP3 mailserver. Everything aside from email only exists on their computer - no contacts etc.

          A lot of those don't have a Windows Live account and don't want to have one associated with their email - they just want their phone to sync to their Outlook.

    2. Dapprman
      Thumb Down

      Not syncing with Outlook

      So a lot like Android then - where you have to rely on your hardware manufacturer doing a decent job with their own conversion software (which fortunately for me HTC does) or also like Palm/HP WebOS

  3. Conrad Longmore
    FAIL

    Shambles

    The whole MeeGo development thing was a shambles. Effectively, Nokia didn't announce any new high-end smartphones for the best part of two years because they ditched the N900's Maemo platform just when it was becoming viable, in order to dick around with Intel.

    You can't sit around tinkering for two years while your competitors are busy creating products.

    And remember, although the N9 has been "announced" there's no projected availability date which is never a good sign. It could be December for all we know..

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Shambles

      "The whole MeeGo development thing was a shambles. Effectively, Nokia didn't announce any new high-end smartphones for the best part of two years because they ditched the N900's Maemo platform just when it was becoming viable, in order to dick around with Intel."

      But the latest N9 stuff is Maemo-based with different UI technology from classic Maemo, so ranting about MeeGo isn't completely justified, even though people probably did get drawn away from the Maemo stuff to work on different user interfaces.

      And Nokia had plenty of opportunities to make mass-market Maemo models: they either squabbled or dragged their feet, or kept Maemo a playground for too long. If you don't get a project out of the door, there's a real risk it'll never get out of the door - that lesson is one of many not really being learned by Nokia.

      But the blame can't really land in the lap of the MeeGo project. After all, corporations ought to be able to have more than one iron in the fire: we're not talking about a couple of blokes, you know.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    this has the makings

    of an interesting and well-argued article.

    Do let us know when you've finished it.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    But what about

    Intel? have they bailed out of Meego? Or is it just that they are being half-hearted about it or perhaps don't have the clout in the mobile space (almost certainly true, given that Atom is the entirety of their strategy there).

    "[Linux] attracts some noisy people who are naturally disposed to Being Right, And Morally Superior"

    I'll say it does. I think some people need to just accept that they actually like being marginalised and then they stop finding other explanations (such as Betrayal Myths) for self-justification and to appease their egos.

    1. what BS

      doomed from the start

      Meego was, and is, doomed from the start... First, it's brought to you by Intel, a complete nobody in the world of owning any software ecosystem above the BIOS and drivers. Second, the marketing messages are confusing-- it's Moblin, it's Meego, it's a phone OS, it's a car OS, it's a netbook OS, it's a tablet OS, and all work harmoniously.... riiight. And last, pissing off both Microsoft AND Google was not the best idea for a software wannabe.

      As for Intel bailing? Nope. Bailing would mean some VPs at Intel would have to admit they were wrong. Never happens at Intel, because being wrong means getting fired. Think of Meego as job preservation. As long as the responsible parties can keep their bosses eating the Meego dog food, they survive.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Announced but not available

    http://europe.nokia.com/find-products/devices/nokia-n9/check-availability

    No UK or US. Rumours abound that it's being kept down to not damage potential WP7 sales.

    Typical Nokia management decision-making.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Linux

      Makes me wonder....

      ...why they bothered announcing it then, unless it's a plan from an internal breakaway group to spite Elop.

      I'd like to see one to play with it, but unless it is possible to modify it using tools available to an external community then it won't be worth it as clearly Elop won't allow Nokia to keep enhancing it.

      I bet it would have a niche for BOFHs who like to be ssh'd into half a dozen systems while going to watch the rugby....

      1. John Hughes
        Thumb Up

        You can modify it.

        The devkit is already available for download.

        (Or just run gcc and vim on the device).

    2. hewbass
      Holmes

      Indeed

      The 6 countries allegedly getting Nokia WP devices at launch are absent from the N9 availability list.

      I have no comment to make about "great mythic betrayals", but this ought to be good for the conspiracy addicts to play with....

    3. Andus McCoatover

      Hahahaha!!!

      Priceless! Nice one, Squire.

      (Well. I could get one in Finland. Maybe, if available. Unless it's been made just as part of a redundancy package for the 1,400 to be kicked out of Nokia here*. Which, given it's strangulation at birth, is about as many as I'd expect to be sold).

      http://www.yle.fi/uutiset/news/2011/06/nokia_staff_cuts_confirmed_-_1400_out_in_finland_2680043.html

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Am I the only one

    ...who knows that you can run pretty much any android app on Meego through alien Dalvik? THe ecosystem is already there for this OS, it can piggy-back on the existing Android ecosystem.

    I would agree that there would be some considerable catching up to do if it were an entirely free-standing OS but it's not, it's another Linux kernel based lightweight OS.

    I wouldn't be surprised to see a few manufacturers dipping their toes in the Meego waters over the next year or two.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Thumb Down

      I think you are...

      Put the Intel crack pipe down... walk away.

      Yes, you are the only one. many of the APIs will work, but not all. But most importantly, a huge % of apps on android are either mash-ups or use cloud services from (wait for it...) Google. Remember maps? Y'all need a license from google for an API key. And surprise! Google won't provide the services to any version they don't endorse. And they don't endorse Android on Meego.

      1. M Gale

        "Y'all need a license from google for an API key."

        For the app, yes. The developer signs that, not the hardware manufacturer nor the OS vendor.

        http://code.google.com/apis/maps/signup.html

        Nowhere in there do I see "you can use this on Android, but not on Meego, and definitely not on iOS or that Microsoft thing." Now, if you were on about Android Market or the Maps app (as opposed to API), then yes I would agree. Google would be most upset about those things running anywhere other than approved platforms. However, nothing there stops developers releasing their own apps for Ovi, Bada, Amazon App Store or whatever else they like.

        The whole point of Google's APIs is that anybody on any platform can access them, shirley?

        1. David Dawson
          Happy

          Api

          I think the comment on apis are referring to the internal/ android/ java apis presented for use in android apps by the Google apps, like the android maps application.

          use (actually, installation) of these is only permitted on endorsed devices. These aren't the web ones.

    2. Neil 7
      Linux

      Alien Dalvik promised for the N9

      http://www.slashgear.com/nokia-n9-android-app-support-promised-with-alien-dalvik-22160809/

      "Seemless integration" of Android apps in the N9 UI...

      Plus Qt apps which run unchanged on MeeGo and the tens of millions of Symbian and soon hundreds of millions of S40 devices.

      Orlowski is wrong. It's not about developing for MeeGo, never has been, it's about developing for Qt, which is also available for Android, WebOS and QNX/Playbook.

  8. Tralala
    Thumb Down

    only your kind of nostalgia permitted...

    Jeez, what is the point of this piece...

    Given a neverending stream of narrow-minded rose tinted nostalgia consciousness - any craptacular psion just gets the drool going...

    Why so hard on other Canutes?

    1. Robert E A Harvey

      well,

      I thought it was quite clever. It got the whole 'bad drives out good' thing going without saying 'betamax'.

      And the idea that the critical ecosystem is not ten thousand fart apps but support from Disney and Sony music had not occured to me (I'm not a 'content' junkie)

  9. Dave Byrne
    Stop

    Don't write Meego off yet.....

    I agree with a lot that is written in this article but I still say it's to early to write off Meego yet.

    There is a good business reason why key players need alternatives to IOS and Andriod. Manufacturers of handsets need to offer differentiation in their products, otherwise they will make no money, except Apple.

    The network operators also need to have alternatives to the Apple and Google ecosystems that relegate them to bit pipe's with little value add or differentiation.

    A true Open source platform like Meego could be the answer to these real business needs that powerful industry players have.

    Finally the assumption is that the ISV community are as deeply committed and tied to IOS or Android as they were to Windows in the 90's. That is not the case. It is now a lot easier to move from platform to platform and emerging standards like HTML5 are likely to become the de-facto cross platform development environment. So all your client device will need is a good web browser.

    This won't change anything in the short term. IOS and Android will continue to dominate. But I wouldn't be surprised if Meego makes a come back in a year or two.

  10. Syren Baran
    Boffin

    Ah, the OS/2 comparision

    Was wondering when someone would bring that up.

    Died of lack of support, lack of apps.

    Well, there is a major difference, two actually.

    1.) Distribution of software.

    Back in the 'ol days you swapped disks. Only kid on the block with a weird system? Yeah, pretty screwed.

    Nowadays you download apps, a dime a dozen. Samsung doesnt seem to have any plans to ditch Bada. Niche systems have a better chance of survival in a connected world.

    2.) Developers.

    No one in their right mind would invest time to learn to develop for a phone which may well be last of its kind. What do they use? Something weird called Qt, not worth learning.

    Not worth being to compile for Symbian, another dying plattform, no promise to support that beyond 2016 from Nokia.

    WebOS? Hmm, come on, just a couple of devices as well and the Android port of Qt is far from finished.

    Ubuntu or other Linux systems? Come on, those freetards wouldnt spend any money on software anyway.

    Windows or OSX? Seriously, you havent noticed we're in the "post-PC"-era yet?

  11. Herbert Meyer
    Happy

    you forgot Amiga

    Maybe there will be a Commodore phone someday.

    I actually have an Intel classmate netbook, and I hunted down a MeeGo image for it, copied it to a USB drive, booted it, and then said "Why ? I already have Ubuntu on this thing, I need another linux like I need a spare..."

    1. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      So we can get mobile guru meditation errors?

      thumbs up to a system that can make you smile at a system error message

      1. M Gale

        *nix is almost as silly with its messages.

        "You don't exist. Go away."

        Seriously?

        1. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
          Happy

          Re: *nix is almost as silly with its messages

          Never got that one. I did see someone so irate at Cyber-NOS that he typed in the command

          > F**k off

          which got the reply:

          Task not in system

          1. John Hughes
            WTF?

            George 3

            12.13.22 _ AB GOD

            ERROR IN AB IN MOP: GOD DOES NOT EXIST

            1. jake Silver badge

              HCF

              Halt and Catch Fire.

              Or the ever popular "You should never see this error."

              Similarly, I looked at the clock this afternoon & it reported "4:04" ... My brain immediately interpreted that as "time not found" ... Nice temporary personal "WTF?" moment :-)

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Go

    automotive

    Meego looks to be the flavour of Linux that the automotive world will adopt. This alone puts it in the picture for many years to come. Intel and the Genivi consortium are backing it, and the signs look good - Intel needs a market for Atom, Automotive plays to their strengths, or rather forgives their weaknesses (i.e. standby power). It has a rich uncle.

    Therefore I predict that Meego will set a standard for robust, secure Linux computing, slightly behind-the-times, but perfect for industrial applications. Furthermore, that support will be available for dozens of years because of the automotive/industrial installed base.

  13. John Styles

    In search of stupidity

    Presumably you have read http://www.insearchofstupidity.com/ ?

    Well worth a read if not. It includes a fine section on OS/2.

    (For what it's worth, to the litany of other OS/2 problems I would mention

    a) IBM's bizarre attempt to muddy the waters as to what you could do with OS/2 not on a PS/2 - presumably their hope was that people would be put off not buying a PS/2 rather than put off buying OS/2

    b) it was just not that good at recognising hardware and very good at ending up with an uninterruptable boot-crash-boot cycle. This was what got me to the closest I have ever got to throwing a computer out of a (3rd floor) window. )

    We had a Nokia N800 which was quite good until we made the mistake of running an update on it, amongst other things it replaced a quite good version of Opera with a craptastic version of Firefox. And if you consider that the N800 and iPod Touch were more or less contemporary.

    1. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

      Chapter six, but the free excerpt doesn't get past the name. Which isn't the point.

      http://www.insearchofstupidity.com/ch6.htm

      They could have called it OS/2 Sodomy and if it worked then it would sell. Well, technologically it worked. Commercially, not so much, which was due to Microsoft.

      I've been struggling to remember exactly where in the story Microsoft screwed IBM and the world.

      I believe the deal was, basically, Windows was supposed to be the stepping stone to OS/2 with GUI. Windows would be built so that Windows apps or the Windows GUI itself would run on OS/2 or vice versa - including Microsoft Office applications, of course (I don't recall if Office was one package by then). Users would, in due course, upgrade to real enterprise desktop computing in OS/2. That's what IBM thought Microsoft was doing. It's also what Lotus thought Microsoft was doing, so the market-leading spreadsheet, Lotus 1-2-3, was ported to OS/2 and not initially to Windows. I think there was a lawsuit over that, I forget the outcome except that today I have to explain what 1-2-3 was.

      That is how OS/2 would have "worked". There was also quite a lot of effort to make it a means to sell IBM PCs instead of competitors', to recover the evolved PC as a premium-priced proprietary design from the swarm of less, then more, then completely legal duplicates or equivalents of IBM's PC design, boxes that would run IBM PC application software but were far cheaper. IBM wanted back the control over their PC standard that Apple has. But -that- wasn't going to happen. The genie wasn't going back in the bottle, however cool the new range of bottled genies were going to be. We would vote with our wallets and keep buying cloned PCs. But we might use OS/2 to run them.

      But meanwhile, Windows was selling very sell as PCs really capable of running it (if not reliably) became affordable, and Microsoft evidently decided - accurately - that Windows itself could occupy the enterprise desktop, and so they wouldn't do any favours for IBM.

      So wWindows left OS/2 and PS/2 standing at the marriage altar by itself and went off to enjoy a lot of free love with other partners.

      If it actually was free, we wouldn't have minded. If it was as stable as OS/2 we wouldn't have minded...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        project Sodomy

        Isn't that something do with iOS?

  14. Jim 59

    Nokia

    "[some Linux users are] ...people who are naturally disposed to Being Right, And Morally Superior." And that's just Linux ? I thought it was a general human tendancy. Windows/Apple people too.

    On the subject of Nokia, they will be back, once they have sorted out their internal problems. Not sure how, but they will be king again.

    1. M Gale

      Was about to say a similar thing.

      I mean on one of the first lectures at uni, the prof said something like "say what you like about Microsoft, they have been the one company that has achieved Bill Gates' dream of putting a PC in every home."

      I just had to put my hand up and mention "uhm, wasn't that Compaq, who first reverse-engineered the PC BIOS, thus opening up a simple product into an entire industry made of many different manufacturers all wanting us to spend money on their products, thus enabling the rapid explosion of the PC as a platform, the success of which Microsoft simply rode the coat tails of and claimed responsibility for?"

      His response was "Shh, we don't mention the war."

      Funny guy.

    2. Richard Plinston

      general human tendancy

      "[some Linux users are] ...people who are naturally disposed to Being Right, And Morally Superior."

      That is what [some] smokers say about non-smokers, and especially about ex-smokers.

      The point being that they _are_ Right and Morally Superior.

  15. bamalam
    Flame

    Nokia throwing away their own future is not a myth

    The comparison with Windows is misguided. OS/2 failed while Windows was always ahead. WP7 is nowhere, particularly outside of the US. Nokia is the leader in sales of smartphones with Symbian and with MeeGo had a path to take developers with them to a new future. So they already have mobile developers and an app store available for virtually every country in the world and they throw it away to go with an unproven platform that doesn't sell yet in important markets like India and China. They had made the investment in mapping software (Navteq) Qt and Linux based OS that was bearing fruit. The problem has been Nokia management and getting in a North American CEO from whose comments conquering the North American market was what mattered. Tomi Ahonen says it much better in his blog why going with WP7 was wrong and the destruction of value by announcing that Symbian was dead.

    See: http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2011/06/to-save-nokia-would-take-these-steps-urgently-as-in-right-now.html

    The biggest mistake in going with MS has proven to be Skype because it means the carriers aren't going to like WP7 based phones.

    1. N13L5

      yep

      One has to wonder if Elop is either retarded or getting paid for making those announcements way earlier than the company needed to.

      You have to wonder where the over-eagerness comes from to suddenly wanna limit the entire company's survival to a single unproven product from an unpopular company.

      He could have merely announced that Nokia was going to add some great Windows phones to their lineup.

      Its such a pathetic noob mistake to call all your existing products dead when you're nowhere near having the new ones launched. I guess Elop was skipping school during the relevant lectures?

      Is Elop that stupid, or is that just a way for M$ to gobble up Nokia for real cheap after bankruptcy?

      The latter is the only thing that could possibly explain his smug attitude at this point.

    2. N13L5

      we are the loosers on every count

      sadly true

      Android is merely the lesser mangled evil at the moment.

      MeeGo had the promise of being a lot more useful, a lot less limited than any other phone OS.

      But you'd need a commitment from some company to make a decent new MeGoo phone at least every other year.

      Not that much to ask, not that hard to do in tandem with putting out identical hardware with another OS.

      I think M$ huge payment to Nokia was mainly to make them drop MeeGo, to cut the throat of Linux on their mobile devices...

      Inspite of this frustration and seeming win for M$, I think we're just a few hardware generations away from being able to install Ubuntu on a custom rom, then just add a phone app to make calls.

      About time to reverse the order...

  16. petur
    Boffin

    Strengths of Meego

    I wouldn't write off Meego that fast, as an open system it is actually pretty easy to write software for:

    1) Qt is cross platform and quite popular already. All those symbian apps are just waiting to be ported to this platform with relative ease...

    2) easy porting to the platform (compared to ios/bada/android/... who implement their own API - WP7 might actually have an advantage here too)

    3) If AlienDalvik is included, possible headstart as far as available apps goes: runs Qt apps + all those Android ones

    I keep being surprised at the number of fine apps that popped up for the n900 (and keep popping up despite everybody calling it a dead platform), I can only think of the easy of porting apps to it as the main reason devs bother to do this.

  17. StoneTheKiwis

    I don't know Andrew ...

    you normally write reasonably sensible stuff, but this looks like a bad hair day.

    OS/2: at one time this outsold Windoze by a wide margin in Germany, a market where people tend to prefer function over form. There were tons of first-rate apps for it, starting with StarOffice as OS/2 only in its first 5 iterations before Sun bought the company as part of its attempt to move all OS/2 desktops to itself. OS/2 is till used by HSBC bank here in the UK due to its acquisition of Midland bank. The reason I switched from OS/2 to Gentoo Linux was simply that it got to the point where I spent more time maintaining the toolchain than using it, and have to say that the crap multi-threading, while know on Wind, was a shock on Linux. Try compiling something, burning a CD and doing other normal stuff simultaneously on OS/2 and it works; on Linux you burn coasters (not that I would go back mind ..). What really happened, as documented in various US records, is that IBM suits lost their bottle in the face of illegal pressure by MS.

    Android - I have a Samsung Galaxy S, bought straight after a Nokia 5800 (only a so-so touch screen phone) and this is frankly a disappointment. Android is only saved because its rooted, has a custom ROM and apps like ConnectBot with portforwarding etc, otherwise the whole thing is immature and sloppy. But that's Google sloppiness for you, starting with their gratuitous mangling of the FHS, to their choice of Java instead of something decent like QT, to the rough and sloppy implementation of core apps (as I first found when writing a perl interface for GoogleCheckout). It long ago became apparent that "Do no evil" was not a promise from them to the world, but a command to the world to "do no evil" to Google.

    Meego - I'm not a fanboi, don't know where you might vote and CBA bothering with it. But I would buy a Nokia Meego phone in a heartbeat, as many others would. Standard Linux and FHS, able to run a shedload of Linux apps, supported across phones, tablets and automotive systems etc. And with Nokia engineers it would have all the tweaks to battery life and basic functions that Symbian is so good at.

    Nokia's problem has always been piss-poor management, and that has only been exacerbated with Elop's final mismanagement before the boat sinks - a classic example being his assertion that they would recoup decimated mark-ups in "services", while being unable to explain or quantify to questioners what this meant.

    Is Elop also a 'myth'? Alas no, this is just as calamitously real as the others mentioned, and even though betrayal is the wrong attitude for the problem, the fact is that none of these situations benefited us poor mugs in consumer land at all, and in fact we are the losers on every count.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      always been piss-poor management?

      I don't know, but surely somebody built it up into the company that was, once synonymous with "mobile phone" --- before Elop's predecessors then destroyed it by turning it into a collection of competing factions.

      Elop didn't destroy Nokia: Nokia was doing a very good job of destroying itself. Elop came aboard a sinking ship; all he did was to open the what's'name valves to make sure it sank.

  18. Lars Silver badge
    Linux

    Sometimes

    I wonder if there is more to a name than one would expect.

    OS/2 against Windows, how could OS/2 or Warp win.

    Meego against Android.

    HP/UX, SCO; Aix against Linux.

    And the Penguin, anything that can beet that, seriously.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    @Andrew O.

    Thumbs down because you're drawing a conclusion based on bad intel.

    Sure Nokia is in bed with Microsoft. A billion dollars buys a bit of loyalty. But you have to ask yourself why Nokia jumped in to bed with Microsoft. Was it a match made in heaven or just two companies realizing that they share a common goal and a common enemy?

    Thumbs down because Andrew isn't asking the right questions.

    Don't count MeeGo out just yet. There's still an untapped niche.

    Posted Anon for obvious reasons.

    PS. When is El Reg going to post about the news released this morning.

    http://www.fiercemobilecontent.com/story/nokia-transforms-navteq-create-location-commerce-platform/2011-06-22?utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss

  20. Doug 3
    Devil

    how did Microsoft forced the ISO to make OOXML a standard? Ask again why OS/2 lost to DOS/Windows

    it's well known to those who were around at the time how Microsoft kept Windows in OEM computers and OS/2 off of OEM computers and it was not all IBM's fault. Microsoft was doing the same thing in 2000 with Windows CE and now we find people thinking Apple invented app stores for handheld computers. Microsoft has always used its position in the market to force their will on those selling computer hardware. Also remember that the year Google Android hit the market, the dominant mobile phone conference of the year held just 6 months earlier had no OEM showing their Android phones and they couldn't talk about it and would only talk about Windows Mobile.

    As for Elop saying that Nokia's Plan B is to make sure Plan A works; that sounds like he's willing to run the company into the ground. I guess it's not politically correct to tell investors his Plan B is to hand Nokia's carcass over to Microsoft for next to nothing.

    Spawn of satin because we're talking about Elop

    1. M Gale

      "Spawn of satin."

      Silk?

      Velvet?

      Corduroy?

      Velcro?

      Sorry. Couldn't resist.

  21. Neil 7
    Boffin

    MeeGo is not really the platform

    The platform is Qt.

    Qt is available on most of the major mobile operating systems - Symbian, S40, Android, WebOS, even Playbook and now MeeGo.

    Most Qt applications will run unchanged on any device running any supported operating system - at most they will require nothing more than a recompile/repackage, and in some cases (pure QML) not even that.

    It's not about MeeGo, which could be a fine mobile OS and certainly on the N9 has a very nice, simple, logical UI.

    Getting apps to the N9 means getting support behind Qt, and with Qt now being made available for S40 that means developers should be hugely interested in supporting the hundreds of millions of devices that can run Qt.

    And MeeGo will benefit from that.

    Finally, MeeGo is not Nokia - if Nokia fail, it doesn't mean MeeGo also fails.

    1. Ilgaz

      It would be Nokia to blame, still

      The original/extremely neat idea was, somehow make Symbian developers code real C++/Qt code (easy compared to 'native'), make them release popular code and ship for truly amazing number of already installed base.

      When Meego ships? Let them ship the same app to Meego still making money with almost zero amount of work.

      Can qt do it? Of course. It already does it, same app ships for Windows/OS X and Linux which has absolutely nothing to do with eachother.

      What really happened is, they made the most amazing mistake of releasing N97 with comical amount of free C: (phone) memory where qt has to go into because of OS design. They somehow managed to alianate even more customers. Their largest smart phone segment, non touch by releasing apps for "touch only" and finally doing the final kick of NOT releasing 4.7 for non touch. This is just one mistake of many.

      So, dare to code World's most perfect app for N97? Prepare for flames for 15MB download (big deal for symbian users, some weird thing) and you may even DOS the users device since it is extremely risky to fill C: on any Nokia device.

      I know N97 is old story but trust me, that is the moment when qt/symbian/linux idea failed.

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Petition Privacy Issue

    Maybe the petition isn't gaining momentum because signing it releases the following for your twitter ac

    * Read Tweets from your timeline.

    * See who you follow, and follow new people.

    * Update your profile.

    * Post Tweets for you.

    * Access your direct messages until June 30th, 2011.

    This turned me away from signing it

    1. M Gale

      Indeed.

      What the hell is with these cross-site-login things anyway?

  23. poohbear

    Point of order, Mr Chairman

    You said, "IBM developed this OS with Microsoft and then decided to go it alone" which is half true. IBM 'decided' to go it alone after MS stabbed them in the back with Win 3 and NT.

    Glad to see I'm not the only one with a Dos -> OS/2 -> Gentoo Linux OS history... Just wish they would port PMMail to Linux... :-)

    1. Pseu Donyme

      +1

      There is an element of betrayal in the OS/2 / Windows history: MS was supposed to carry on developing OS/2, but instead dropped that in favour of Windows, forcing IBM to pick up where it left off. This, of course, did not help OS/2 Warp getting into market in a timely manner. I even seem to recall that Windows 3.0, a precursor to 3.1 which was the chief OS/2 killer, originated as a skunk-works project combining Windows 2.x and a DOS-extender for protected mode operation for direct use of memory beyond 640k/1M so screwing IBM seems like an opportunistic move rather than a part of a master plan.

      1. JimC
        Holmes

        Mmm yes...

        Its easy to forget just how big a deal that whole memory management thing was back then... I can remember spending hours tuning config.sys files so that we could get a particularly memory hungry (for those days) Unisys Office automation product (=combined email/word processor/primitive doc management for you kids) to coexist with Novell client software... Tell that to the kids today and... well part from anything else they won't believe you could run all that on a machine with 1MB of RAM...

  24. John Savard

    Right About OS/2

    You're right about OS/2. People choose a platform based on what applications they can get for it, not how wonderful the operating system is all by itself. Not just OS/2, but also the Macintosh, for example, was affected by that.

    I would have liked OS/2 to succeed, but IBM made a big push to get it noticed at the time OS/2 Warp 3.0 came out, and... it didn't help. Maybe they could have done even more, but it's hard for me to think of what it is that they could have done to give people a reason to switch.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Yep...

      I remember installing OS/2 Warp, while I was at uni. I installed it hacked about with it a bit and then though "now what?". Basically Win3.11 wasn't technically as good, but it had apps, thus making it a better choice. I really wanted to use OS/2 but you couldn't get apps - remember this was in the time before the Internet was generally available, there were a few sites that I could get at uni, but then you had to transfer with floppies, which just wasn't a goer.

  25. Dan 55 Silver badge
    Boffin

    Narrative seems to fit here

    "In this narrative, a bold and brilliant piece of technology is thwarted not because it isn't good enough, or has failed in the marketplace, but because of (delete where applicable) marketing incompetence, or nefarious interference. If that interference comes from Microsoft, so much the better."

    Hands on seem positive but it's not been launched yet so it's not yet had chance to fail in the marketplace. It's already been announced that the roadmap is a dead end. What does that leave us with? Yes, Nokia management which is perfectly described by "marketing incompetence or nefarious interference."

  26. Giles Jones Gold badge

    It's not Meego

    As others have pointed out elsewhere, this phone uses the Harmattan Maemo branch just before Maemo and Moblin merged to create Meego.

    1. bamalam

      ... Yes it is

      It is MeeGo 1.2 but with Nokia sauce on top which they call Harmattan. This was developed for Maemo alright but because both Maemo and MeeGo are Linux based it allowed Nokia to transfer the efforts to MeeGo and make use of the underlying MeeGo UX as well. Along with Ovi Maps it shows that Nokia could have differentiated themselves on MeeGo while making use of the combined efforts of themselves and others. Looks more advanced than where WP7 is.

      1. Neil 7
        Linux

        @bamalam - No, it's not

        It's not MeeGo - Giles speaks the truth.

        It's actually Maemo 6, the follow on to Maemo5 used on the N900, but Maemo6 is now compatible with MeeGo 1.2 APIs which is why the Linux Foundation that own MeeGo allowed Nokia to use the MeeGo branding. Yes that's right, Nokia were required to seek and were granted - much to the surprise of many - permission to call their OS "MeeGo" even though it's not based on MeeGo core.

        As an example of where they diverge, MeeGo uses RPMs for packaging whereas Maemo6 (the OS on the N9) uses DEBs as Maemo has always been Debian based, while MeeGo is derived from the Fedora/Red Hat line (a much debated change inherited from Moblin). Beyond that, though, there is very little architectural difference and most Qt apps won't know or care about the difference.

        So in short, without any doubt, the N9 is not running "true" MeeGo, but it's close enough to be branded as such.

  27. Martin Owens
    Thumb Down

    Myths

    Just because you've got a betrayal narrative doesn't always mean that it's a myth. Causation and all that.

    Attempt to sound reasonable without rationality -1

  28. llewton

    linux fan

    "It's got 287 signatories"

    so why you writing about it, dude. what's your problem. do you cover every online petition with 287 signatures? here i'll start one to have you shipped to des moines to flip burgers there, see if you cover that :D

    anyway what's nokia?

  29. MS Rocks
    FAIL

    wtf?

    hah hah. Did I just read a post that said Meego should be a success because 'you can run pretty much any android app on Meego through alien Dalvik'

    Alien Dalvik eh? I bet the average consumer out there is just dying to get their hands on a phone that may do want they want it to do once they have installed 'Alien Dalvik'

    Heh heh

  30. ysth
    Megaphone

    The lesson (call it myth if you want) of MS vs OS/2 is vitally important today

    The lesson (call it myth if you want) of MS vs OS/2 is vitally important today.

    However much there might be to criticize in IBM's handling of OS/2, the fact is that it was killed off by a very well planned campaign of FUD and viciously anti-competitive practices by Microsoft. It is really disappointing to hear in the comments here some of the memes designed by MS for their campaign:

    http://groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=ComesExhN03#E1116

    And we are seeing exactly the same kind of campaign today against Android. All the lawsuits, all the astroturfed press, all the backroom arm-twisting for royalties from Android device manufacturers, the buying off of Nokia: it's all part of the campaign to give MS a chance to catch up on the mobile market they missed.

    1. Andrew Orlowski (Written by Reg staff)

      Re: The lesson (call it myth if you want) of MS vs OS/2 is vitally important today

      "And we are seeing exactly the same kind of campaign today against Android. All the lawsuits, all the astroturfed press, all the backroom arm-twisting for royalties from Android device manufacturers, the buying off of Nokia: it's all part of the campaign to give MS a chance to catch up on the mobile market they missed."

      It's all a giant conspiracy.

      The myth lives on, hatching new myths.

      1. ysth

        Re: The lesson (call it myth if you want) of MS vs OS/2 is vitally important today

        > It's all a giant conspiracy.

        Thanks for responding. I guess your conspiracy is my well-thought out plan. Or rather, Microsoft's.

        Do you think they don't have one? Or that they do, but some of the components I mentioned are not part of it?

    2. N13L5
      Facepalm

      don't be surprised about finding M$ campaign memes

      These days, many thousands of freelance writers are being hired to offer up skewed forum opinions in just about every comment section of online news papers.

      These guys get something like 0.6 cents per word, so they'll write something positive about M$ or any other corporation that can't compete based on the quality of their conduct.

      Not a great living for those people, but perfect for any large corporation's need to spread FUD

  31. Sander van der Wal

    MeeGo? The important bit was the Qt announcement

    It appears that Qt is to be put on top of S40: http://www.developer.nokia.com/Community/Blogs/blog/nokia-developer-news/2011/06/21/future-of-qt-bringing-apps-to-next-billion

    This would make S40 a smartphone platform too, and as such it would compete directly with iOS, Android and WinPhone. Why would Nokia introduce two new smartphone platforms (Qt-S40 and WinPhone) on their future devices?

  32. Alan Bourke

    I thought Apple fanboys were bad

    Nokia and Symbian fanboys could teach them a lot.

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

  33. John Hughes
    FAIL

    Dolchstoßlegende

    Typicaly left wing.

    1. Tilman Ahr
      Coat

      required, is it?

      Yes, yes. Obviously. You see, there are even _two_ ways to explain why the Dolchstoßlegende and such were. For one: the Party was named (in translation) "national SOCIALIST WORKERS party of Germany" - if that isn't leftwing enough for you, you're definitely a treehugging pinko commernest.

      And secondly: They were EVIL!!1ELFELEVEN. Which obviously means they had to be leftwing...

      Oh - you're not a died-in-the-wool republican/Tory/Christian-democrat? Sorry to have bothered you.

      Mine's the black utility vest with the "Antifaschistische Aktion"- badge on and the balaclava and pepperspray in, thank you.

  34. Levente Szileszky
    Stop

    Again: Elop is there to make sure Microsoft gets what it wants...

    ...by either making Windows Phone 7/8 finally running on more devices than the population of Vatican City (unlikely) or sinking Nokia's stock as low as possible so MS can get it's top-notch distribution and hardware divisions for next to nothing.

    Memories of Sendo, Nortel, Danger and near-death experiences of Sony Ericsson, Motorola, LG, Palm should always remind you of MS101: partnering with Microsoft = KISS OF DEATH.

  35. Ilgaz

    I'd pass Meego and shouldn't bother with Nokia except S40

    As a Symbian user, I was extremely happy with previous, sane decision/rumour that Meego will drive very high end (lets call them luxury) and Symbian will be middle end since I am really not comfortable with spending a decent laptop/netbook price to a phone. It doesn't matter how smart or trendy it is. I am just for reliability, quality of third party apps, signal strength and... kernel itself. I also like a real keyboard, at least BB style.

    So, I still use E71 from Nokia and I am also running macs along with a cheap amd desktop running windows 7.

    For people like me (several, like 100M), meego, linux etc. were pure fantasy. Are you into ideology/politics? Eh, what happened to Neo 1973? Didn't sell. It was the only true open and free (as in freedom) device.

    So, as they gave up Symbian and doing everything to make developers abandon it too, people buys everything but Nokia. Except, there are business guys who really want perfect reliability and connectivity, they go for S40 Nokias which has nothing to do with Symbian. I even saw a dollar billionaire using them. Well, his secretary/assistant for him.

    I agree to Orlowski, "better" doesn't always win. In fact, they were stupidly afraid of meego undermine symbian sales. Idiots didn't even figure Symbian user profile of their own. They don't get Symbian developers who writes/can write true smart phone apps either. They seriously think they will even touch Windows .net mobile/silverlight. C++/openc coders... Yea, right. They just can't figure objective c or android hybrid apps!

  36. Jack
    Alert

    Correction: Betrayal Myth = Fascism

    Betrayal myths are central to fascism, not communism -- in fact it's one of the three defining features of all fascist parties, along with a cult of the leader and the glorification and mythologization of supposed historical greatness of the race and/or nation.

    See Nazi "stab in the back" myth for why Germany lost WWI.

    Yes, I know, the other two forms of totalitarianism (communism and fundamentalism) are also premised on "active enemy" myths (class enemies and heretics/schismatics/unbelievers respectively) but those myths don't take the form of "betrayal".

    OK, I'll step away from my history books now...

    1. JimC

      I dunno

      I suspect betrayal myths are pretty much universal whenever something hasn't gone someone's way and they don't like it...

  37. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Amiga mention

    oooh. that was out of the blue.

    nice.

    by the way, Amiga is lurking, almost hidden from view...once day we'll be back! ;-)

  38. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    On thin clients and authoritativeness

    "A great example is Digital Equipment Corporation's Shark network computer. I have it on impeccable authority that the Shark was killed off because Compaq had acquired DEC, and feared losing its Windows license"

    Your authority is severely peckable I'm afraid. The bit about being threatened by Bill is true though.

    I was going to write my own description but I find John Lettice did a nice job right here a decade and a bit ago, based on an article in the NY Times, which describes it pretty much as I remember it.

    With all the coverage of The Cloud in El Reg, where's the matching coverage of thin clients?

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/1998/09/10/gates_forced_digital_to_kill/

    http://www.nytimes.com/1998/09/10/business/digital-employees-tell-of-threats-by-gates-over-product.html

  39. cloudberry

    Want to know the real reason OS/2 failed?

    Because it was only half an operating system!

    <ba-chingg>

  40. Christian R. Conrad
    Thumb Down

    Wrong on the overall feel on OS/2; wrong on the single most pertinent fact on MeeGo

    One can't help but wonder how old mr Orlowski is: For all the Googling on the OS/2 history he does, one certainly doesn't get the feel he was there to experience it as it happened.

    I was never a reporter with my own sources in the business and all; I only read their work... But I read quite a lot of them back in the day, and I am still not too old to have a fairly clear recollection of the aggregate impression it all left on the interested reader. That impression does not tally with mr Orlowski's view now, that OS/2 died of itself and Microsoft had nothing to do with it.

    Likewise, his comment to the effect that "MeeGo is dead in the water and could never save Nokia, not because it isn't a great OS, because it is, but because it lacks an ecosystem" [Sorry for paraphrasing half your article into a single sentence] is also tecnically correct, but it leaves out an ever-so-vital little bit of the truth: Of course it lacks an ecosystem, because mr Elop's pronouncements that Nokia wouldn't use it, would concentrate on Windows Phone, and (in a recent Helsingin Sanomat interview) wouldn't ever take it up again even if it were to become a sales success -- that's WHY it won't have an ecosystem. Because he deliberately MADE SURE IT WON'T.

    Then again, mr Orlowski is of course also technically correct that neither of these were really "conspiracies". A conspiracy means a plan hatched in collusion between at least two different parties, and in both of these cases the succesful plan had only one author: in the first case, Microsoft, and in the second, mr Elop (or as some would have it, Microsoft again).

    But that's really hair-splitting, isn't it?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Wrong on the overall feel on OS/2; wrong on the single most pertinent fact on MeeGo

      Andrew was there when O2 was alive and when it died.

  41. N13L5
    Linux

    its all bunk

    To some people, totally aside from religion, its just annoying when an open source OS is getting replaced by more wanna-be monopolistic proprietary crap from M$, who would like nothing more but mirror image Apple's walled garden. Reduce choice - eliminate competition.

    From a purely pragmatic standpoint, it would make the most sense for consumers to stick to the least proprietary, most open source OS they can get. With an open source OS, there's just less ways corporations can scam you, or starve you for features and fixes, like M$ did with us on the old Windows Mobile.

    The only bright side here is, that Elop's plan A and B still has a good chance of failing, cause Windphone7 hasn't gone anywhere in terms of market share.

    I for one hope it stays that way. I don't want Microsoft on my devices till 2050.

    I'm using Android for now, but I'd prefer MeeGo. If I can't get MeeGo from Nokia, does that mean I'll buy Windphone7 from them? Did you really think that?

    Much better to stick with Google, till you can just install Ubuntu on your mobile device and get that to make phone calls by installing a phone app.

    Just so you don't misunderstand me: MeeGo isn't some icon, god or theoretical thing of purity to me, just the most likely candidate to avoid too tight a grip of greedy corporate hands.

  42. Lomax
    Stop

    I don't mind...

    ...if MeeGo remains an enthusiasts platform

    ...if Nokia (or other handset mfgs) only release new MeeGo devices very slowly

    ...if the population in general remiains wholly unimpressed by MeeGo

    ...if my phone doesn't have the latest 2GHz quad core CPU and 64Gb RAM

    ...if MeeGo attracts precious few deveopers and doesn't have an "app store"

    ...if Orlowski thinks that might makes right

    I do mind...

    ...if the only choices availble to us come from one of the big three

    ...if we end up with a similar death of mobile OS options that we've seen on the desktop

    ...if I can no longer use a handset the ways I use my N900 - i.e. like my other computers

    ...if there is no viable OSS player in the mobile ecosystem

    ...if I'm actively being prevented from "getting under the hood" of a device I own

    ...if the default settings mean my phone is constantly leaking personal data to the Borg

    Why?

    1) Because I think a diverse ecosystem is stronger and offers more potential for evolution to come into play.

    2) Because MeeGo is actually a really nice OS; fast, flexible and unintrusive.

    3) Because you don't really need all that many devs when you have access to the entire Linux universe of software.

    4) Because the N900 has become an invaluable productivity tool for me.

    5) Because we have the right to expect privacy by default.

    Finally, congrats to Nokia for launching what looks like an awesome device, very well placed design and feature wise. I'm sure it will get a much more favourable reception once in the hands of reviewers. I had hoped the N950 would also be made available to purchase but at least we now get a chance to see the baby that was flushed out with the bathwater.

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