Linus Torvalds: looking back, looking forward (ITWire)

Though it seems that Android is quickly gobbling up the mobile world. It's almost like 80-s when Microsoft+Intel quickly killed off everything else except the high-end niche Apple.

Then it could either mean:
1) the deal is done, and I think it sucks;
2) the deal would be stupid as it obviously sucks, so now way.

Curiously most people only see 1. It doesn't seem logical at this stage.

Particularly because Android doesn't look so dangerous in the long run. When you're late, the proper action is not to chase, but to leap-frog. Meego can be such a leapfrog:
- the future is smartphone as computer. Also Android is excellent for phones, it falls short for a full computer (same for ChromeOs). The Moto Atrix in netbook mode just provide a web browser, that's too little. Meego can provide a full computer experience;
- Meego can run Android apps at some point. So it can be from a user point of view a superset of Android --- do everything Android can do, and more. It would be a nice way for Nokia to push Android to low end in a short time.

Similarly, people interpret Elop comment on Meego as "Meego will be killed". This seems very weird to me. Elop already said previously that Meego was the future. He got Palm UI guy to join. The QT guys went dark on their UI in advance of an announcement soon. The only thing Elop really said was that Meego was too late (just after saying Symbian was dead, and there was a lot of smart guys at Nokia, just talking Meego). So I would rather interpret this as Elop being (justifiably) pissed about Meego delay, and wanting to push more Meego devices more quickly. While at the same time getting a short term fix. How people jumped to "Elop said Meego is canned" seems a wild interpretation to me, not in line with recent events.

Anyway, just idle speculation. Let's see tomorrow. But dumping Meego at this stage seems really, really brain damaged. We need the power of computers on phones, it's coming and will be baseline within 4 to 5 years. Apple with iOS son of OS-X has all they need. Android and WP7 can be seen as nice for phones, but still way too short.

And by the way, don't get me started on security. Yes, the principles of Android are sound. But there are bugs, and then the only way to deal is quick updates.
Because of customization from handset vendors, it's very late on Android, if it ever happens. And when it happens, it's a full image (> 150 MB) for the next version. And as it relies on handset vendors who don't seem to care it won't change quickly.
Now with Meego and a true linux distro, Nokia has in hands all the tools to push incrementals changes, as in Debian of Fedora. And it wouldn't cost much to them to do it propely. It can be a "black swan" event: just wait for a ig security issue and show you're ready. In the current situation, security in smartphone is just begging for problems.