As for split effort, Maemo and Moblin are both at their core linux distribution and they both share common tools, architectures designs and softwares. So except for the top of the pyramid part (the GUI) i’m guessing they can both share 99% of their work!

And… though i really wish good luck to projects like Pandora and OpenMoko and would like to see them succeed, i think the our best luck in the short term is going to be with Maemo for those who want a powerful and open tablet/phone.
(Yes i love tablets but it seems it has to get a phone until more people switch to VoIP and we get a solution for wireless internet access at a reasonable price!)

Nokia is learning a lot and fast with each release of Maemo (been there since the n800, now with an n810), hopefully they’ll continue to grow the market for it without alienating the developers. They’re opening more and more of the closed source parts from what i can gather. (the wifi driver for one?)

Up till now I’ve been mostly happy but i really need it to become a cell phone as i can’t carry 2 devices in my pocket!

I just wish Maemo/Mer had a Dalvik runtime (the java-ish appliation runtime engine for Android). Then no one would have to choose between Maemo and Android. Those who want full Linux, run Maemo+Dalvik. Those who don’t, just run the basic Android that comes with their device.

Nokia opened most of their maemo stuff, sponsores a lot of projects and is active in the community. Even trying to stay as close as possible to gnome by getting their enhancements upstream. Of course not only because they are nice but because it makes sense to not have a branch of something which then drifts further and further away from the main development – making development harder and more expensive.

Android is a completely new development and it is very good for what is does, but it lacks the ability of porting existing apps to it. This is what makes maemo different from android and nice for the community. With maemo5, the next evolution of maemo, not only gnome applications, but also QT applications can be ported.

maemo even runs evolution-data-server since the 770 which could give a full address book, calendar, etc. but nobody did seriously go for it, yet.

All in all maemo has it’s right to be and leads the way in many aspects.

We’ll just have to see what happens with ubuntu mobile and the other mobile platforms after maemo5 and maybe at some point in the future they can find a common ground so mobile applications can, like on the desktop, be just packaged for the distribution. As soon as this is the case we’ll have reached a stable phase. currently it is all in development more or less.

maemo shares a lot of features and goals with moblin but they are distinct projects. Moblin is looking to be a customizable netbook/mid distro for vendors to package with their devices. maemo is nokia’s research playground and tightly coupled to their device. The 2 projects already share code as the hildon libs nokia developed are in moblin and the clutter library intel bought for moblin is in fremantle. Both nokia and intel have also invested heavily in the linix kernel power subsystem and each is benefiting in the other’s work.

Nokia is continously hiring people to work in Maemo even with the actual crisis (they have hired hundreds in the last months), I think this is a really positive thing for the future of Maemo.