MeeGo Community Investigates Tizen Alternatives

Last month the Tizen project was announced with Intel and the Linux Foundation transitioning their support from MeeGo to Tizen. The LiMo Foundation and Samsung are also joining the new mobile open-source OS project. However, many in the MeeGo community remain less than enthusiastic about this new Linux OS that focuses upon HTML5 APIs for applications and abandoning the ways of MeeGo.

Since the 27 September announcement that Intel on the behalf of MeeGo and the Linux Foundation would be supporting Tizen, many MeeGo community developers and other members feel let down.

In response to the MeeGo blog post by Intel's Imad Sousou where he effectively announces the end of MeeGo in favor of Tizen, negative comments have been funnelling in since the announcement during Oktoberfest.

In the MeeGo development list for September and October are a number of threads expressing outrage and bringing up possibilities for the future of MeeGo, without the support of Intel and the Linux Foundation. Many even feel betrayed by these organizations. Among the reasons are not trusting the direction of these companies, not being interested in HTML5 applications, and the lack of community governance with Tizen.

"Burned me once, that's ok, burned me twice, fine, but the third time (after speaking about Meego in some other engagements)? You've got to have a pretty good reason why I'm gonna trust this new development," as said by one contributor in terms of the long history of MeeGo with Moblin and Maemo, etc.

There's discussions by the independent MeeGo community, including other companies that have a stake in MeeGo, about various options. Among the mentioned options are using MeeGo for showcasing Qt-based products, using it on netbooks from some smaller vendors, re-approach the Linux Foundation about supporting MeeGo, or merging/joining MeeGo with another project like openSUSE. There's also a proposal for bringing back the Mer project (Mer was formerly short for Maemo Reconstructed, now MeeGo Reconstructed).

What will ultimately happen to the MeeGo brand and its community is not yet known, but there seems to be enough active individuals still pushing for a MeeGo-that's-not-Tizen project nearly one month after Tizen was announced by the Linux Foundation.