Warning: This is not MeeGo

Posted Jun 21, 2011 17:45 UTC (Tue) by Jaffa (guest, #4327)
In reply to: Warning: This is not MeeGo by arjan
Parent article: Nokia's N9 handset launched

With respect Arjan, the Linux Foundation own the "MeeGo" trademark and, according to them, although Harmattan may not be MeeGo Compliant or run on the packages from meego.com OBS, it is something with MeeGo in its name.

Semantics aside, and far more importantly, MeeGo needs two things - both of which can be provided by the N9 and N950:

A mass-market, consumer-friendly device perceived to be running MeeGo, for future OEMs and manufacturers to see that a compelling UX can be built on (something like) MeeGo.
Apps.

The Compliance Specification (for MeeGo 1.1 at least) specifies that "compliant applications must conform to the MeeGo API", and since the "MeeGo API" is very similar to the "Harmattan API", this means a relatively simple porting exercise (although a lot of the Harmattan GUI is MTF rather than QML, QML is still the preferred way to write Harmattan apps, as it is on MeeGo).

There are a couple of issues, of course: packaging, which can be dealt with trivially with metadata in the SDK and OBS; and (more importantly) the toolkit with which you can build consistent QML user interfaces. Basically, there are two for QML: Intel's MeeGo UX Components (developed behind closed doors, thrown over the wall and now open) and Nokia's Qt Quick Components for Symbian and Harmattan (developed in the open, then closed for Harmattan's "big reveal" and now, presumably, about to be re-opened).

At the MeeGo Conference last month the development community was basically told "tough" and that there'd be no common UI toolkit. FLOSS developers with N950s and N9s will want to target both Harmattan and MeeGo if it's easy. It's in everyone's interest to make it so.

So, I expect a further QML component libraries - which abstract the two competing ones - to be developed by Harmattan developers wanting to target MeeGo. Ideally, it would be unnecessary, but it's in MeeGo's interest to foster this: I'll put money on there being more Harmattan apps within a month of people getting N950s than there are currently MeeGo apps.

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