We're not able to glean much of a clue what this all means to the program exactly, but at least four players in and around Nokia's Maemo team have quit in the past few weeks. The company's so-called "Internet Tablets" -- the
770,
N800, and
N810 -- have been the main beneficiaries of the Maemo community's efforts; with Nokia's recent
acquisition of Trolltech it's pretty clear that the company's still fully committed to the open source thing, but who knows, maybe Maemo's not the way they want to do it. Fortunately, Maemo's picked up enough of a following to live on with or without Nokia's support, but it'd be an awful shame to see 'em move in an entirely different direction nonetheless. We'd say the platform's safe -- for the moment, anyway, with the impending launch of the
WiMAX'd N810 seeming likely -- but we'll keep an eye out for developments.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
john @ Mar 25th 2008 10:42AM
Could it be a lead-up to Nokia joining the Android bandwagon? That might mean they need fewer linux engineers, only needing to support whatever value-adds that they put on top of Android.
Or maybe it means that, between trolltech and S60, they don't need as many GUI engineers on the Maemo team, if they've worked out how to get those things integrated into Maemo.
Or maybe it's just standard churn. How big is the Maemo team overall?
guy @ Mar 25th 2008 2:47PM
Nope, as one of them states it's just lots of underpaid work. In Nokia (like everywhere else in big companies) the oversized management eats most of the cake while engineering on its own is a dead end. It doesn't matter how good you are on the job, payment stays the same.
Good for them they got the lesson early and hopefully they'll get in a more exciting and much better paid work at a small(er) company.
R2 @ Mar 26th 2008 12:45AM
I'm fine with a change from Maemo to Android (Linux to Linux), but if they switch to Windows Mobile, about half of their N810 following will tell them to shove it, including myself.
Richard @ Mar 26th 2008 8:32AM
Maemo is still going strong. Maybe Maemo/ Hildon is the way to do it, that's why they are leaving, poached by another company using Hildon? Finish Elektrobit or some other MID company using Hildon.
x @ Mar 28th 2008 3:47PM
Mass exodus? 2-3 people leaving -- at the same time they are hiring a lot of new. Business as usual!