The story of Nokia's Maemo and MeeGo
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 11th Oct 2012 21:41 UTC
PDAs, Cellphones, Wireless It's a long read - but totally and utterly worth it. After interviewing ten former and current Nokia employees, and combining their insider information with publicly available information, Sampsa Kurri has written a long and detailed article about the history of Maemo and MeeGo within Nokia, and everything that went wrong - which is a lot. It's sad tale, one that reads almost like a manual on how to not run a large company. Still, between the bad decisions and frustrations, there's a red thread of hope that leads to Jolla.
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RE[2]: Remember...
by zima on Sun 14th Oct 2012 11:13 UTC in reply to "RE: Remember..."
zima
Member since:
2005-07-06

Well, you have to give it to Nokia : while Apple just chose to throw away Copland altogether and produce yet another UNIX clone instead, Nokia actually managed to fix enough of the problems that they encountered during their development hell to release a working product (the N9), which I believe is a fairly unique achievement in the computer industry ! ;)

What was N9 OS if not "yet another UNIX clone"? (some of its fans even specifically focus on how it's more "really *nix" than Android) And while Apple did throw away Copland, 1) I think some of Copland tech found its way into ~OS9 2) some Classic tech definately found its way into OSX - it was a moderately smooth transition.

Also, "a working product" might be not the most precise description (for example: http://www.mobile-review.com/review/nokia-n9-2-en.shtml & especially in view of the enormous R&D costs and the time it took; not sure from where the perpetuated myth comes, perhaps some people wish to see it as better than it was; or, from another perspective: products can be also judged by their marketplace performance)

More seriously, I think that many people around here feel sympathetic towards the old Nokia because, as is apparent in the article, it was one of the few remaining tech companies with engineers in power. Though it is also made obvious here that this approach has its problems, especially in large companies, there is something saddening about the way executives don't understand what their employees are doing these days, and can only think in terms of paying the bills and selling to the largest number. That may be a safer way to keep a company afloat and profitable, but it is alienating for workers and surely does not help innovation.

http://kyon.pl/img/21355,smbc-comics.com,.html ;)

And many (often the same?) people can't seem to accept how the present situation of Nokia didn't come from, say, the saboteur Canadian - but is the result of wide-scale company dynamics present & quite visible for around half a decade, by now.

BTW, I'd say that not safely keeping a company afloat and profitable alienates workers much more, and really surely doesn't help innovation

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