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Nokia to Acquire and Open Source Symbian
Posted by
timothy
on Tue Jun 24, 2008 07:59 AM
from the to-fight-an-android-you-must-become-one dept.
from the to-fight-an-android-you-must-become-one dept.
zyzko writes "Nokia has placed an offer on Symbian stock — it currently owns a 48% share and intends to buy the other shareholders out, 91% of the stockholders have already agreed. The press has already labeled this as an countermeasure to fight Android. Nokia has also created Symbian foundation — it might mean more open Symbian."
Symbian is "currently the world's dominant smartphone operating system (206 million phones shipped, 18.5 million in Q1 2008)," writes reader thaig, who points out coverage in the Economic Times. If this deal goes through as expected, the Foundation says that selected components of the Symbian operating system would be made available as open source at launch under the Eclipse Public License (EPL) 1.0
, with the rest of the platform following over the next two years.
Related Stories
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Technology: Symbian Introduces Open Source Release Plan 92 comments
volume4 brings news that David Wood of the Symbian Foundation has made a post detailing their plans for a release schedule, with new versions due out every six months. We discussed Nokia's acquisition of Symbian for the purpose of open sourcing the popular mobile OS last year. Quoting:
"There's a lot of activity underway, throughout the software development teams for all the different packages that make up the Symbian Platform. These packages are finding their way into platform releases. The plan is that there will be two platform releases each year. ... Symbian^2, which is based on S60 5.1, reaches a functionally complete state at the middle of this year, and should be hardened by the end of the year. This means that the first devices based on Symbian^2 could be reaching the market any time around the end of this year — depending on the integration plans, the level of customisation, and the design choices made by manufacturers. Symbian^3 follows on six months later — reaching a functionally complete state at the end of this year, and should be hardened by the middle of 2010."
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This merger will bring a new meaning. . . (Score:4, Funny)
to the phrase, "I'll just put my phone on vibrate."
My moneys (Score:2)
Re:My moneys (Score:5, Funny)
There's something wrong with my brain.
Every time I read "Symbian" I see "simian" mentally...
which of course lead to my reading your post as "My monkey's on google"
I need to go back to bed.
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They've been planning this for a long time (Score:5, Informative)
Nokia has been known for experimenting [nokia.com] with open source in the recent years. This surely was a way to test the waters in community-driven development, to learn how to go along and specially what not to do [slashdot.org].
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Re:They've been planning this for a long time (Score:5, Insightful)
In terms of the freedom of all users as a collective, rather than just the subset of users that want to insert DRM to restrict the freedom of all users, there is no Freer licence than the GPL. Having a set of rules to ensure freedom is a hell of a lot freer than a total absence of rules.
take the example of the US constitution - what's freer - that set of "restrictions" or a total anarchy?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Do you honestly feel the minor "restriction" (more accurately a simple and easily fulfilled obligation) to not withhold what was freely shared to you [...]
But that's not what the GPL is about. The GPL is about sharing what was given to you and anything you've done as well that might be (by a ridiculously broad brush) considered a "derivative work".
You license something under the GPL when you want to influence what other people can do with their code. If all you want to do is keep your code "free", then
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Do you honestly feel the minor "restriction" (more accurately a simple and easily fulfilled obligation) to not withhold what was freely shared to you is worse than the deliberate act of constructing DRM
No, but that's not the restriction (and it's amusing to see the hypocritical redefinition of 'restriction' to "restriction"--if that's not telling, I don't know what is).
The very real restriction is that someone is giving you code, not for free, but with the attached strings that if you want to improve the code and you want to share that product with others, you have to share your code as well. This is offensive and no more or less free than proprietary software.
Continuing to share that which was already
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You misunderstand the scope of the GPL. Despite its wording, the real effect it has is not on freedom of code, but on freedom of whole software projects.
On the contrary, it is the supporters of the GPL who dramatically misunderstand its consequences. The GPL is not a project license, period.
Your contention is interesting, but not supported by reality. The release of GPL code is not confined in any way to "the project", nor does the development of closed-off modifications have any impact on the fulfillment of the goal. Lack of progress is not the same thing as detriment.
Even if the original, unmodified code is still present, the new code is competing in the same environment, and people in the project has no longer access to the enhancements - they must rebuild it for themselves.
That is what freedom means. If you are releasing something into the wild for free,
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Ummm... How is the GPL restrictive? You can put DRM in a GPL'd application, you can't complain when they take it out though, you can't make a proprietary product from the source, making Nokia immune to other proprietary phone makers copying the source... The GPL offers the most freedom to the user, and really, that is what counts.
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Actually, with the "what not to do" I didn't mean favoring DRM, but stating comments that upset the whole tech-savvy open source community.
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I don't think it upsets the 'whole' community. It's obviously bound to upset the say-alot/contribute-nothing crowd and Stallmanites.
Sure, perhaps it's not the best idea to raise issues which aren't popular with a certain body of people.
In the real world we have plenty of products which incorporate open source technologies and DRM. DRM will die for a lot better reasons than not being open source friendly.
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Re:They've been planning this for a long time (Score:5, Informative)
Once again, if Nokia stops releasing Qt open source, the Free Qt agreement kicks in, and it's forced open (under BSD, IIRC) and given to KDE.
Parent
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Yes they bought "your" Qt just to close the evil Qt which they have been using for years. It is a major evil Nokia conspiracy.Like, they didn't want a common, proven framework for OS/CPU neutral future.
symbian development (Score:5, Interesting)
Is symbian devel environment still considered as form of S/M or has it evolved into something usable during last 3 years?
Haven't tried it since.
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If Symbian goes open source, maybe we can get good native code running on it instead of the bastardization of C++ it currently uses.
Countermeasure to fight Android? Hah - Android won't even be in my sights until they let me write native code for it.
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Re:symbian development (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Parent
Re:symbian development (Score:5, Insightful)
Its become much *much* worse. The number of classes has increased to over 1700. Documentation is terrible. Code signing has immensely complicated everything.
It's all well and good open-sourcing Symbian but if nobody can run their own home-compiled version because their mobile phone refuses to run an unsigned OS image, then you'll have a lot of trouble getting anyone outside of Nokia to put in any development effort.
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Leaves (Score:2)
Yeah. Personally I'd rather just use something newer that isn't full of cruft.
What about Sony? (Score:5, Interesting)
Since UIQ is based on Symbian, how will this affect Sony Ericsson phones?
Technically they're in direct competition with Nokia, so if they sell their stake in Symbian, will they come to some sort of licensing agreement or do you think we'll see Sony either develop their own OS or switch to Android/Windows Mobile?
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Re:What about Sony? (Score:5, Informative)
So, basically Sony Erricson will submit their UIQ code base to Symbian foundation, Nokia will sumbit S60 code base and NTTDoCoMo will give MOAP. Anyone in the Symbian foundation can use each others' UI framework on top of Symbian!
Parent
Awareness... (Score:5, Insightful)
Now the market is really heating up. After the whole Symbian OS and S60 goes open source Microsoft/Apple will be under lot of pressure to react to this. Even though lot of consumers will not bother if the platform is open or not, once touch devices are unveiled by Nokia, the number of applications that will be developed will be huge. Not to mention the contributions will be from all the major handset vendors (LG, Samsung, Motorola etc). For once I think we have all the evil corporates agree on something whcih looks like will make the consumers life easy.
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Re:Awareness... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
I dont understand...... (Score:5, Insightful)
First breath, " OSS needs to be more DRM and hate the customer attitude friendly. We need to lock this stuff up so the customer can not do what they want!"
Second Breath, "WE are buying the Symbian Phone OS, can we get some free developers on this? we will Open source it! Mmkay? thanks!"
So which is it? did they retract their previous standce that DRM and locking was wonderful and needed?
Re:I dont understand...... (Score:5, Insightful)
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DRM is like "No, you can't have our files, you may view this if you pay (but we can revoke your rights any time we want)"
I don't know itunes, but this is probably "you can view these files only on APPLE ipod, not other players. If you lose your files, you should have made backup (oh, you can't? hahaha!)"
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DRM and closed/Open Source are not the same thing. As far as cellphone makers go, Nokia are one of the few advocates of open source software.
They never said DRM was "wonderful", they said it was "necessary". They have a platform they want to bring content to, it's plainly obvious it's the content providers who are the cause of the "necessary" bit.
Perhaps they're just a step ahead. (Score:2)
Haven't you been watching what Nokia has been doing for the last couple of years? What gets me is just how much smarter than Motorola these guys are.
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People who espouse your point of view are usually naive little students who are still living off mommy and daddy. After glancing at your blog long enough to notice a typo in the first paragraph I can see that is probably not the case.
The reality is that DRM is forced upon nokia by the mobile phone companies who subsidise all their products. Mobile phones are not free to manufacture, they are paid for by AT&T, Singular, Vodaphone, Orange and all the other networks. they pay for them, so they choose the f
Nokia had better talk to Blackwater (Score:3, Funny)
Update the Series 5 (Score:2)
Observations (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Symbian OS is shipped in a whole bunch of phones and this move will ensure that current development projects based on the OS are more likely to continue because it became a whole lot cheaper to make a Symbian phone. $4 per unit doesn't sound like a lot but that is a huge margin for a phone manufacturer.
2. The licensing issues for Symbian OS and various UI components will become vastly easier to resolve and make it easier to start a phone project. Symbian OS is currently a web of various source categorizations depending on your partner status level (developer/device creator/semi conductor partner), that doesn't even consider the semi-co base port components, multimedia infrastructure/codecs and the UI (Series 60, UIQ etc).
The UI for Symbian products contains an extremely large amount of functionality you would expect in the base OS.
In the end it's a damn sight easier to do business with tech companies on an open source basis.
3. It raises interesting questions about whether there will be continued investment in Symbian oriented technologies. One technology question area that stands out is the kernel. The current Symbian OS kernel (called EKA2 by the way) is microkernel design optimised for the various ARM architectures with low latency features and a small memory footprint.
Application processors for mobile processors are starting to look towards SMP designs in order to increase performance without incurring large power consumption penalties. The Symbian kernel and OS design doesn't currently support SMP, so it is possible that the Linux kernel is the direction to go in - obsoleting the EKA2 kernel at some point in the future for high end mobile devices.
However it is probably worth pointing out that whilst the Linux kernel works well for SMP systems for scalable performance whether it does this AND manages to be good for power saving/consumption is possibly less proven.
4. There are questions over how open is this environment? If a $1500 dollar license is required to get the source, is this open? Doesn't quite sound like it.
5. How will this open source environment operate? There appear to be problems with open source projects which involve a dominant partner. IBM - Eclipse, Sun - Java,OpenOffice,MySQL are notable examples.
Being open source is good for doing business but there are many practicalities to work out which make a technology good or bad open source.
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> 4. There are questions over how open is this environment? If a $1500 dollar license is required to get the source, is this open? Doesn't quite sound like it.
I think you'll find that this is only while they go through the opening procedure/etc.
http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/item/7528_Symbian_Foundation_Says_Open_S.php [allaboutsymbian.com]
SMP support (Score:3, Informative)
They are already working on SMP support as can be seen here:
http://www.symbian.com/news/pr/2007/pr20079433.html
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Near all Symbian phones have dual CPU but you wouldn't want a SMP aware Symbian phone. Why? Because the main CPU does a very critical thing, call handling. Whatever happens in background must not prevent user from calling and especially emergency calls.
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I'm curious on how they are going to enforce strict memory standards, both in footprint and in leak tolerance (which is currently 0 according to a developer I know there).
Re:Observations (Score:4, Insightful)
In Symbiand, if your application floods memory, it gets ass kicked by low memory framework. Only System Application marked applications are free of it but that marking requires a very strict certification process.
Also lets not forget the user factor. If your app uses lots of ram and CPU, it doesn't have future in users handset. User says "oh crap" and reaches to "Application manager" to get rid of it.
It is all open market with Symbian Inc. (foundation) governing the borders. It is how those die hard rivals work on same OS even before the "foundation". It is more like Java scene.
Parent
Too little, too late (Score:3, Interesting)
Nokia is in a tough spot here. They're still the market leader for smartphones world wide, but Windows Mobile has been biting into that for a while now, and Android is just around the corner. I can't help but equate Symbian to PalmOS - a technical jumble that's frustrating to develop for and nearly impossible to maintain, being attacked by rapidly growing and technically superior competitors.
In the case of Palm, they couldn't fix PalmOS *or* spool up a replacement in time, and they were thus relegated to Yet Another Windows Mobile vendor. I suppose Nokia is trying to avoid that fate by taking over Symbian and throwing enough resources at it to keep it alive and moving forward, but that can't be easy. Nokia also seems to take the Sun view of open source: if you can no longer make money from something, open source it for good will. That's fine, but given how crufty Symbian is and how many alternatives there are now I'm not sure what good that code is going to do anybody.
Either way, I'm sure the other Symbian partners are happy to have it off their hands. Android is clearly the superior platform in the near-term, and divorcing themselves from Symbian allows them to focus their efforts there. Despite that, it's clear that Nokia is resisting Android - maybe to differentiate themselves from the competitors, maybe just to prevent obsoleting all of their existing Symbian resources - but it will be interesting to see if they can ultimately avoid becoming Yet Another Andriod Vendor themselves.
Thanks Nokia! (Score:2)
Now, how about relicensing Qt under BSD or LGPL...
This means nothing (Score:5, Interesting)
All the code in the world is useless until I can actually change the software on my phone and make it do what I want and not what some phone company thinks I should and shouldn't be able to do.
Which is why the OpenMoko Neo FreeRunner is so good. Decent hardware for a phone (including touch screen, GPS, tri-band GSM, WiFi and Bluetooth) with almost all of the source for the phone being 100% open (and replaceable).
The only closed bits are the GSM stack (which runs on a seperate baseband processor and talks to the host CPU via 100% documented open standards, all the stuff you need to know to talk to the baseband is documented and open), the driver for the GPS chip (people are reverse engineering it and making an open source replacement) and some of the fancy stuff to do with the GPU.
And with regards to the GPU (which is aparently being dropped from the next model), the only closed thing is the official docs and specs provided to the OpenMoko team from the GPU vendor. The GPU vendor is quite happy for the OpenMoko team to produce and open source a driver for the GPU (and even a new set of specs for it), they just dont want any code or specs created by THEM being released publicly (having everything that goes public created by a 3rd party helps with legal issues I guess)
The hardware is as open as they can legally go too. For example, they have released the same CAD drawings for the case and such as they themselves used to produce the molds for it. So if you want to make a new case in a color (or material) they dont offer (such as a rubber case so it can survive being dropped on the ground), the info is there.
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I don't see where it says that there'll be *two* versions....afaict, there's just the one.