Last time I’ve shared my observations from MeeGo Conference related to Maemo and Nokia N900. But judging by the name, this event was aiming to MeeGo platform so let’s see what does it offer for now.

First moments of conference, most of first days sessions were filled with big words and promises of what MeeGo will be capable of. I’m rather sceptical if it comes to beliving in advertisment. Nevertheless I belive in at least few other things: Open Source, cooperation and resources. MeeGo is project started by joined forces of Nokia, big player of mobile phone market, and Intel, one of electronics market leaders. During first day of the conference Ben Bar-Haim (AMD, corporate vice president, software development) announced that another big player another big and well known company, AMD, will join MeeGo with it’s resources. Including huge possibilities lying in open source, such cooperation may result in creation of really good platform for mobile devices.

Big words and marketing is one thing, but what exactly is MeeGo apart from being Maemo 5 successor? It’s a lot more, since Maemo 5 is for mobile phones (if we can still call N900 phone, not mobile computer with GSM modem and phone application as some say) and MeeGo aims to many more electronic devices: phones, netbooks, tablets, home entertainment systems, even IVI (in-vehicle infotainment) solutions. MeeGo aims to provide open source operating system for every electronic device we use every day and improve connectivity between this devices. Common core system and variety of user interfaces and additional technologies available for Linux have already shown that it’s possible to run MeeGo 1.1 at least on ARM-based smartphones or Intel-based netbooks and IVI appliances. I think AMD won’t stay behind for long and next MeeGo release will include their products.

So indeed MeeGo has great potential, but still MeeGo Conference was mainly oriented on marketing and gathering more people to cooperate. This area already shows some successes, since among over 1000 people attending the conference I’ve met lot of representatives of big open source projects (for example KDE developers who have mistaken me with someone else ), representatives of fine internal software components (like OpenSL ES audio system – do not mistake it with OpenGL ) or many people interested in using and spread MeeGo (like bloggers I’ve met, thanks for nice conversation guys, or freelancers).

Finally, to complete advertising of MeeGo, Nokia and Intel came up with idea to give out Lenovo netbooks with MeeGo on board. Every attendee got own Lenovo S10-3t with possibility to install fully open source MeeGo or version having Broadcom closed drivers. All of this netbooks only to promote MeeGo, to contribute community, to show other people what it’s worth. As this is quite big expense I think that Nokia and Intel have great hopes for MeeGo and big plans for the future.

I cannot predict the future, I’m not market analytic, I’m open source developer and I know what open source can do for people. Will MeeGo bee good platform that can compete with others? There’s big effor taken, there’s big chance. Let’s not waste it!

–

MJ