Nokia to Acquire and Open Source Symbian 150
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.
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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I don't think you should link pro or anti DRM measures implicitly to 'open-source'ness' as in GPLv3 (see Linus's concerns about this http://www.linux.com/articles/51826 [linux.com])
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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, 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?
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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 [...]
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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how is it a ridiculously broad brush? please justify this.
You just need to pick your pet cause that "people" must have the "freedom from" being subjected to.
i think you need to reread my statement and you'll find you have i clearly stated, and indeed my whole point was, that the GPL's "pet cause" is the freedom of users to have complete access to
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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
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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.
The intent never was to provide "free code", but to gather a group of people around the goals for which that code was created, and ensuring that those people has no artificial restrictions to use the code created to fulfill that goal. In this context, there is harm in someone modifying the code and releasing closed versions. Even if the original, unmodified
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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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No software developer should begrudge any other the right to license their hard work and well-deserved property rights in the manner they see fit and to the extent they see fit.
Copyright isn't a natural right. It's just a restraint on trade. Many of us believe it has outlived its usefulness.
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Natural rights don't have anything to do with anything.
Creators do indeed have a fundamental right to that which they create, however, and that includes nothing short of complete dominion.
Calling it a restraint on trade is a clever, but ultimately ineffective, approach. Any property right is by definition a restraint on trade. Further, the implication that trade should be wholly unrestrained is ipso facto invalid. Just look at what happens to water quality.
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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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Both Nokia and Symbian still continue to offer paid "partner-only" API. Even though Nokia says they don't charge for licensing the APIs, only "processing fees", Symbian one is insanely expensive as you have to join their Platinum Program to access it.
Anyone correct me if I'm wrong. Last I checked it was still the case.
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Off topic: Kingship is not like property. Property can be bought and sold, the individual's economic means enables them to maintain ownership. The individual's economic means, in turn, are determined (in a free society) by several factors related to the physical and mental capabilities with which they have been endowed by nature, or (as you imply) the simple material benefits bestowed by their parents. Either way, the receiver has little say in the matter, and life is not fair. Those who are willing to exer
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.
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What happens if they put OSS QT on lifesupport and it met the minimum requirements for the free qt agreement and released QT pro with most of the development?
Not saying this will happen but im sure its easy for them to get out of free qt agreement if they want.
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Fork?
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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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Windows emulator in S60 SDK is still consistently crap.
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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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Yeah, in Java the same SKU would work everywhere just like that. No need to take into account bazillion different apis, implementation and hardware differences and myriads of bugs. Not to speak about working around things because the platform likes to pretend that devices are the same when they aren't. Oh wait..
In all seriousness, I've found native code hell of a lot easier to deal with than J2ME.
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Android does not use the J2ME VM. Instead it uses the Dalvik VM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalvik_virtual_machine).
One might expect that the Android API's will be more consistent across devices than the various J2ME implementations.
Interpreter overhead? (Score:2)
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.
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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The way to do this is to get an Open Signed i.e. limited to particular devices.
http://developer.symbian.com/main/signed/ [symbian.com]
Alternatively I wouldn't be surprised a port turned up for something like:
http://beagleboard.org/ [beagleboard.org]
or some such future variant
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Signing policy prevents viruses. Ask Nokia why they were forced to it. Lots of stuff can already run self signed, what Nokia and others doesn't want unsigned applications do is basically root access.
Lets not confuse who to blame (Cabir) and the people who robotically accepts every warning their device displays.
It is still better than draconian Apple policy, I hope one day those DRM whiners will figure Apple iPhone is a DRM providers dream and have balls to say it. Deep level firmware hacking doesn't count a
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Leaves (Score:2)
Yeah. Personally I'd rather just use something newer that isn't full of cruft.
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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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They get Symbian OS for free (and Series 60 access too) plus they have thrown UIQ into the Symbian Foundation pot.
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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!
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According to this press release [nokia.com], "Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and NTT DOCOMO announced today their intent to unite Symbian OS(TM), S60, UIQ and MOAP(S) to create one open mobile software platform." So actually they're not just contributing the separate code bases but actively attempting to create a new unified platform:
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judging from this (swedish) article [www.idg.se] in idg.se, they're pretty much toast... They're planning to get rid of 200 of their 370 employees,ouch....
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Is that what Android was meant to be?
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)
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Not ass kicked perhaps and iphone is still a complete prison compared to Symbian and even Windows mobile but one must admit that iPhone changed lots of things at Nokia and Symbian scene.
When you enter http://www.s60.com/ [s60.com] , it says "Open to new features" which is exactly true. Now Nokia and Symbian is way more open source friendly and they even ship a POSIX framework and openly support Pyhton development which already creates wonders. Nobody would even imagine Nokia releasing a web server running in mobile p
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I assume GP is referring to Nokia in the US where - according to what I've read on Slashdot, anyway (I'm not in the US) - they don't have as big market share.
More Linux friendly.. (Score:1)
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iinm, you can already do that on any s60 phone with wifi (eg n95) using an application called Nimbuzz - http://get.nimbuzz.com/ [nimbuzz.com]
I think it does msn and yahoo voice too (no video though).
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How about... today? [linuxdevices.com]
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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I really want to like the OpenMoko stuff, but I can't yet because of things like this [openmoko.org]:
I'm sorry, but there's really no use talking about a "phone" that can't even reliably make phone calls yet!
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No. The people for whom I'm blocking file access didn't pay for my files. I paid for the DRMed music/videos. You are putting restrictions on what I can and cannot do with something I paid good money for.
It's like if I sell you a car and then throw in a EDLA (End Driver License Agreement) that prevents you f
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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
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DRM goes away when customer gets rid of it and market gives up as result. In current scene nobody can start a crusade against DRM and go chapter 11 in matter of months. Nokia or others can't say "We removed DRM, down with establishment". It is up to CUSTOMER to reject DRM for alternatives. E.g. iPhone people won't buy from iTMS, they will go for emusic or whatever is open.
You guys expecting Nokia, Sony, Apple to do heroical things. No. It is up to customer.
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oh come on mods. Surely that post was insightful?!?
Nokia had better talk to Blackwater (Score:3, Funny)
Update the Series 5 (Score:2)
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Sadly I think the Series 5 design belongs to Psion and is loaded with patents Don't expect David Potter (Chairman of Psion) to not ask for a large amount of cash up front rather than taking a per unit bit of cash.
It is a very cool design though
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.
+1 Insightful (Score:1)
For moderators with mod points
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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]
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Thanks, that explains that
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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Yep, but it hasn't manifested itself in a product as of yet. Semicos have plans and there is an NEC test chip to start work on (Linux runs SMP on this already of course)
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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.
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Linux generally evolves around needs. So, if the need (and funding) for
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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...
Crippling Open Source Operating System (Score:1)
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I don't see where it says that there'll be *two* versions....afaict, there's just the one.
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But if it is on GPL thanks to v3 they cant lock it down like they have to for the providers (like say tivo had to)
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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In my dictionary the word for a proprietary project that promises and doesn't deliver is vaporware. Regardless of the reasons for not shipping. Incidentaly, the word for a OSS project that promises and doesn't deliver is also vaporw
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I don't suppose you read that it's currently in the initial production run, and is supposed to go on sale in a week or two?
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Community_Updates [openmoko.org]
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I don't suppose you read that it's currently in the initial production run, and is supposed to go on sale in a week or two?
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Community_Updates [openmoko.org]
Code signing (Score:2)
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Yeah, you can self-sign apps already.
I hate Sybian (Score:2, Funny)
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I second that. Built a SIP instant messenger for our work on Series 60, It's absolutely horrible, I believe they cleaned it up a abit with v. 9 but i was already gone by then and have never looked back. Someone said they now have python bindings, so all might not be lost....
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The python for S60 documentation is here [nokia.com].
It is very well documented, and they have bindings for pretty well everything the camera does, including stuff like GPS and OpenGL support on fancier phones like the E90 communicator.