Nokia to open-source Symbian

It's IT Blogwatch: in which Nokia buys and open-sources the Symbian OS. Not to mention disastrous Photoshopping...

Matt Hamblen gets straight to the point (without ramblin'): [You're fired -Ed.]

As if "openness" wasn't already the key word of the year for mobile communications, Nokia took the concept a step further today, announcing plans to create an organization called the Symbian Foundation, which will make the Symbian mobile operating system an open platform ... a direct threat to the Android mobile platform, which is being developed by the Open Handset Alliance established by Google Inc., and other Linux-based mobile operating systems such as the LiMo Foundation's namesake platform ... Nokia said it will purchase the remaining shares of Symbian Software Ltd. that it doesn't already own in the second half of 2008. It currently owns about 48% and will pay about $410 million for the rest. Nokia will then own all Symbian assets and will transfer them to the Symbian Foundation. more

Ryan Paul adds:

Nokia ... partnered with several other major handset makers to launch the new nonprofit Symbian Foundation, which will facilitate the liberation of the platform ... Several core Symbian Foundation members are contributing their own Symbian-based technologies so that the best third-party enhancements can be converged into a single unified stack. This will include Nokia's own S60 platform, the UIQ graphical user interface layer which is jointly owned by Sony Ericsson and Motorola, and NTT DoCoMo's MOAP. These components will be available soon under a royalty-free license to all members of the foundation. Within two years, the platform will be completely open source. more

Om Malik chants:

Major mobile players such as Motorola, NTT DoCoMo, AT&T, LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone have all signed on ... Symbian to me is like a football, constantly being kicked around and forever finding new goal posts. Its genesis can be traced back to Psion, a company that made handheld computers long before they became fashionable ... What is being sold today as the Symbian Foundation is actually what Symbian used to be, a for-profit company that made an operating system used by a diverse group of handset makers ... Handset makers ... can’t afford to muck around with proprietary software platforms ... Apple, LiMo and Google are forcing [Symbian] to change their game. more

Steve O'Hear listens carefully: [Good grief -Ed.]

“Our vision is to become the most widely used software platform on the planet and indeed today Symbian OS leads its market by any measure”, said Nigel Clifford, CEO of Symbian ... Note that Clifford didn’t say that he wanted the new the Symbian to become the most widely used mobile platform on the planet. Instead, the vision is clearly to become the most widely used software platform period. That’s because the Mobile Web is the future of software ... Handset makers and networks will be able to spend considerably less time on the piping and more time on applications and services. And of course it’s applications and services (paid or ad-supported) not operating systems where the real money is. more

Stan Schroeder reacts:

He’s right about Symbian being the leading open platform for mobile devices, but I’m not sure about it being the most attractive platform. I’ve heard many a Java programmer cry over the many iterations of the Symbian OS - S60, S80, UIQ 1,2,3 and their variations - iPhone, on the other hand, is only one device, which makes the application development process a much simpler affair. The upcoming Android is, well, upcoming, so we’ll have to wait see how it will fare compared to Symbian and the iPhone OS; so far, I’ve heard a significant amount of negative comments from developers. more

Dameon Welch-Abemathy reminds us of the other half of the story:

The plan is to open source the entire stack under the Eclipse Public License, making it possible for anyone to see-and tweak-the innards of Symbian. Initially, once Symbian Foundation launches, everything will be made available on a royalty-free basis to fellow members of the Symbian Foundation. more

Tony Dennis wonders if it's a "massive overreaction to Google Android":

The huge difference over the existing status quo is that the Foundation technology will be made available royalty free to any organisation which chooses to join. More surprising still is this statement from the Foundation… “The Foundation will make selected components available as open source at launch.” Not only does this make the Foundation a direct rival to the Google/Android platform, it sweeps the arpet out directly from beneath its feet. Why bother developing for a platform like android where the phones don’t even exist yet, when existing applications aimed at Symbian phones should be able to be ported to the new Foundation platform ... [and] where does that leave Microsoft with windows Mobile? Who’s going to pay a licence fee for that if Symbian becomes Open source? more

But blackpaw worries about the worsening experience for application developers:

Its become much much worse. The number of classes has increased to over 1700. Documentation is terrible. Code signing has immensely complicated everything. However python has become very capable with solid support from Nokia - we're using it for a commercial project. I suspect Nokia are planning to use it in place of the abomination Java has become on smartphones. more

And finally...

• Photoshop disasters [hat tip: BBC Click]
  Highlights, for busy people:
  • Sears: Let's Have A Big Hand For The Model
  • University of Halle: This May Hurt A Little
  • Houston Realtors: Subprime Home Clone Fiasco
  • Lancome: Ooh You Poor Man
  • Vizu: She's Off Her Marbles

Buffer overflow:

• Datamation: IT Workers of the World, Rejoice (and ask for a raise)
• Phil Windley: Velocity 08: Storage at Scale
• The Pondering Primate: P2P Represents 44% Of All Bandwidth Consumed On The Net
• 4sysops: Windows 7 release date in January 2010? Is this a gimmick release?
• Zack Urlocker: Firefox 3 tears up the charts
• Patently-O: Microsoft's Patenting Trend
• Network Security: OpenID is for low impact identity
• John Paczkowski: Friday the Thirteenth Part 4: MicroHoo Lives!

Other Computerworld bloggers:

• Patrick Thibodeau: Why Guam is exempt from H-1B cap
• SJVN: Kiss VMWare's rump good-bye
• Don Tennant: The bigger question
• Mike Elgan: Photographic memory at last (no, seriously!)
• Mark Hall: Security critical for VM expansion
• Preston Gralla: Harris Survey: Microsoft's reputation far outweighs Apple's
• Douglas Schweitzer: Too many corporate networks remain underprotected
• Shark Tank: What YouTube is for
• Shark Bait: Worst Places to Work?

Like this stuff? Subscribe to the RSS feed.

Richi Jennings is an independent analyst/adviser/consultant, specializing in blogging, email, and spam. A 21 year, cross-functional IT veteran, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. You can follow him on Twitter, pretend to be Richi's friend on Facebook, or just use boring old email: blogwatch@richi.co.uk.

Previously in IT Blogwatch:

• HP/DEC's AdvFS is GPL
• Mac OS vulnerability exploited by poker Trojan
• Steal this Wi-Fi: go to jail