Ari Jaaksi resigns from Nokia

Ari Jaaksi can be considered one of the fathers of Maemo (and hence MeeGo). As the vice president of Maemo Software, Maemo Devices and MeeGo Devices at Nokia; his enthusiasm for mobile Linux was palpable; and though no Steve Jobs, he did a fantastic job of talking to press, developers and enthusiasts at events like Nokia World, OSiM World, Maemo Summit and more.

However, he's handed in his resignation at Nokia for "personal reasons". All we can do is wish him luck in his future endeavours, thank him for his work bringing us this platform and hope that Nokia's MeeGo teams will get someone as open, personable and committed as Ari to fill his shoes. Many news articles are reporting: Jaaksi's exit won't affect Nokia's coming MeeGo device launches or its strategy for further development of the platform, [spokesperson] Huovinen said, adding that the company is looking for candidates to fill his position.

Nokia says MeeGo announcement still set for 2010

Chuong Nguyen, of PocketNow, asked some common questions of the Nokia folk at the telecommunication industry's CTIA event last week: I did my best to push, prod, and shake out the gossip of MeeGo's release date from Nokia's representatives in San Francisco over the last few days at CTIA, especially in light of rumors of a delay until 2011 given my MeeGo's other parent Intel. Nokia's reps on hand continue to say what they've said in the past--that we'll see an announcement from the Finnish smartphone maker--who's committed now to MeeGo and Symbian^3--by the end of the year. Now, whether that will mean just an announcement or an actual shipping product at that time is still unclear, but the good news remains that Nokia intends to keep us in the loop on MeeGo development efforts. With no sign of the Harmattan platform SDK yet, and with constant changes to the Qt and MeeGo Touch frameworks, your editor's hopes for people getting their hands on the Harmattan device before the end of the year are dimming.