Tough love letter to Nokia

“Why are you excited about Nokia World 2011?”, asks the company. It’s a great question because the answer is not simple.

I have been criticizing Nokia. I get angry about delays and uncertainty. I got angry the other day because the Qt SDK doesn’t work exactly as I wished, like Maemo before. Every day I find some little nuisance in Symbian^3 too.

But when I look back, the truth is I care a lot about Nokia. Something about them attracts me, and I want to see them improving more and more.

We recently lost a great pioneer of computers, Dennis Ritchie. His seminal work means a lot to me, as does gcc and Linux. I see some of that in Nokia. They manage to avoid gimmicks and bad marketing, and are approaching free software and bringing good technology to tons of people, like few are doing.

Qt is awesome, and is doing great on N8 and N9. Nokia is doing good things, and the speculation is nonsense. I am excited about Nokia World because they will show that. I feel whoever cares about these values of mine may not be completely satisfied, but will be happy. Go Nokia!!