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A partial summary of one of the freedoms of Free Software is "anyone to whom you give a binary, you must also give the source" (and various rights as permitted by the license you choose).

The Symbian Foundation makes available two relevant things at present:

• source code, licensed under the EPL
• Product Development Kits (PDKs)

The former can be taken by anyone at present; at worst, they will be forking the platform on a dead codeline. Nokia, the primary code contributor to the Symbian platform and owner of most of the copyrights to the code, will continue developing Symbian in their own repositories. Some points of note:

• Nokia are looking at an alternate open and direct model for making the platform available to the community in future. The aim is that the model "will be no less open, free and flexible" than today's.
• No decision made as yet regarding whether EPL will be retained or an alternate license adopted. Petra indicated that terms will not be more restrictive than EPL.

The PDKs are the only Symbian binaries that we (the Symbian Foundation) have released. Each PDK includes the source that was used to build it. Therefore, the obligation to the EPL is met, and anyone can get those PDKs - either off our web site, while we're still around to host it, or by ordering it from the Foundation after Jan 2011, as per our announcement. At present there is a click-through license to which you must agree to to download a PDK, but, at least for the parts under the EPL, you can do what you wish with that PDK subject to that license.

So, as far as the Foundation is concerned, Symbian is, and remains, free software. We are under no obligation to give you the source if we stop giving you the binaries.

Other people also distribute it, chief amongst them Nokia, in the way of phones. (Nokia also note that they are on track to sell >50 million S^3 devices - that is a lot of distribution. Don't think this platform is going away.) The product ships with a notice saying it is built from open source code, and I can confirm that if you send an e-mail to Nokia, they will post you a DVD-R with the "Nokia N8 OSS Code" on it. It's similar to what we distribute, but not identical, as they have made internal changes. So, as far as Nokia are concerned, Symbian is free software.

There are lots of reasons for and against buying any device, but don't use the excuse that the platform is no longer free. Once the genie is out of the bottle, that's it. The bottle was very deliberately uncorked.

A partial summary of one of the freedoms of Free Software is "anyone to whom you give a binary, you must also give the source" (and various rights as permitted by the license you choose).

The Symbian Foundation makes available two relevant things at present:

• source code, licensed under the EPL
• Product Development Kits (PDKs)

The former can be taken by anyone at present; at worst, they will be forking the platform on a dead codeline. Nokia, the primary code contributor to the Symbian platform and owner of most of the copyrights to the code, will continue developing Symbian in their own repositories. Some points of note:

• Nokia are looking at an alternate open and direct model for making the platform available to the community in future. The aim is that the model "will be no less open, free and flexible" than today's.
• No decision made as yet regarding whether EPL will be retained or an alternate license adopted. Petra indicated that terms will not be more restrictive than EPL.

The PDKs are the only Symbian binaries that we (the Symbian Foundation) have released. Each PDK includes the source that was used to build it. Therefore, the obligation to the EPL is met, and anyone can get those PDKs - either off our web site, while we're still around to host it, or by ordering it from the Foundation after Jan 2011, as per our announcement. At present there is a click-through license to which you must agree to to download a PDK, but, at least for the parts under the EPL, you can do what you wish with that PDK subject to that license.

So, as far as the Foundation is concerned, Symbian is, and remains, free software. We are under no obligation to give you the source if we stop giving you the binaries.

Other people also distribute it, chief amongst them Nokia, in the way of phones. (Nokia also note that they are on track to sell >50 million S^3 devices - that is a lot of distribution. Don't think this platform is going away.) The product ships with a notice saying it is built from open source code, and I can confirm that if you send an e-mail to Nokia, they will post you a DVD-R with the "Nokia N8 OSS Code" on it. It's similar to what we distribute, but not identical, as they have made internal changes. So, as far as Nokia are concerned, Symbian is free software.

There are lots of reasons for and against buying any device, but don't use the excuse that the platform is no longer free. Once the genie is out of the bottle, that's it. The bottle was very deliberately uncorked.

A partial summary of one of the freedoms of Free Software is "anyone to whom you give a binary, you must also give the source" (and various rights as permitted by the license you choose).

The Symbian Foundation makes available two relevant things at present:

• source code, licensed under the EPL
• Product Development Kits (PDKs)

The former can be taken by anyone at present; at worst, they will be forking the platform on a dead codeline. Nokia, the primary code contributor to the Symbian platform and owner of most of the copyrights to the code, will continue developing Symbian in their own repositories. Some points of note:

• Nokia are looking at an alternate open and direct model for making the platform available to the community in future. The aim is that the model "will be no less open, free and flexible" than today's.
• No decision made as yet regarding whether EPL will be retained or an alternate license adopted. Petra indicated that terms will not be more restrictive than EPL.

The PDKs are the only Symbian binaries that we (the Symbian Foundation) have released. Each PDK includes the source that was used to build it. Therefore, the obligation to the EPL is met, and anyone can get those PDKs - either off our web site, while we're still around to host it, or by ordering it from the Foundation after Jan 2011, as per our announcement. At present there is a click-through license to which you must agree to to download a PDK, but, at least for the parts under the EPL, you can do what you wish with that PDK subject to that license.

So, as far as the Foundation is concerned, Symbian is, and remains, free software. We are under no obligation to give you the source if we stop giving you the binaries.

Other people also distribute it, chief amongst them Nokia, in the way of phones. (Nokia also note that they are on track to sell >50 million S^3 devices - that is a lot of distribution. Don't think this platform is going away.) The product ships with a notice saying it is built from open source code, and I can confirm that if you send an e-mail to Nokia, they will post you a DVD-R with the "Nokia N8 OSS Code" on it. It's similar to what we distribute, but not identical, as they have made internal changes. So, as far as Nokia are concerned, Symbian is free software.

There are lots of reasons for and against buying any device, but don't use the excuse that the platform is no longer free. Once the genie is out of the bottle, that's it. The bottle was very deliberately uncorked.

Then we have a different understanding of what a "smartphone" means. Pretty much all MOAP phones are feature phones, and if you are going to argue that phones like these are "smartphones" - i.e. in the same category as iOS and Android phones - then I don't know what to tell you.

I'm not talking about the OS's technical capabilities/potential. Go check Nokia's strategy, and you'll find out I'm right.

So what are you talking about?

Even if we go by what the company markets it by (which, in terms of looking at the "smartphone market", is a poor indicator anyway), Nokia refer to Symbian phones as smartphones, and they refer to Symbian as a smartphone OS. E.g.:

http://www.symbian.org/ - "Contribute to the world's most widely used smartphone platform"

I presume you were thinking of S40, which (despite still being a smartphone by any non-arbitrary definition, in that it runs apps and has Internet access, and is an OS for a mobile computer in a phone) they market as not being a smartphone, to distinguish it from their Symbian (i.e., S60) phones.

Fittet all the answer into the heading, what now? Yes, pointing out that the 6 month are only a promise and there is no guarantee that it becomes reality. And maybe a link or two:

http://developer.symbian.org/wiki/index.php/Symbian%5E4

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbian_platform#Version_history

Of course it will to late when the Symbian^4 devices finally come out.

* Download a very heavy C++ ide which was, till recently, locked down. You had to get a "professional" license if you wanted to do something useful. There is the "express" version but it was deliberately crippled. Oh yeah it only runs on Windows.

1) It's free now so what's the real problem? If you grieve because you had to pay in the past, then you should compare with how much the alternatives costed at the time.
2) It runs only on Windows? Well, everybody develops for the iPhone, whose SDK works only on OSX, which means even less machines than Windows. Anyway, the new Nokia-recommended SDKs for developing on Symbian work on Windows, Linux and OSX.
3) The "heavy C++ ide" is Eclipse, which was at the time one of the most used IDEs.
3) If you target Java, then you can use any IDE of your choice, you're not bound to use Nokia's heavy ide.

* If you wanted to distribute your app you had to get it signed.

Yeah, that's a pain, but every phone platform in the world won't accept unsigned apps without annoying the user to death. Some won't accept them at all. Still they seem quite successful.

* If you're a developer like me who is uncomfortable using a low level language you can go the Java route. Yeah. Write once, debug everywhere. It's a mess. I can't even get my midlet to get the IMEI code of the phone so I can use it for authentication.

Nokia did their job: they support the standard Sun APIs, and added specific APIs to access platform-specific features. Their phones will run unmodified JavaME JARs. What's specifically wrong with their Java implementation? They're even contributing a free virtual machine to the Symbian project. Btw I hear that System.getProperty("com.nokia.mid.imei"); will work on any S60 phone released after february 2007.

* A beautiful middle ground is Python for S60. I tried to install it recently on my Nokia N73. A huge bag of fail.

How exactly did it fail? It appears to work on my N73, and it's a 2006 phone. You have to sign the interpreter to access all phone features.

* Yeah sure Symbian is open source. I want to download the source, build it and run it. Have you read the instructions to get it up and running under Linux? Let's just say that it goes way over my head. I heard on a podcast that Nokia uses some kind of circuit board made by Texas Instruments. Ok, so I need to go get some specialized device just to run the kernel? Please.

You mean to be able to run it in an emulator? The emulator is currently windows-only, alas. Don't know if it works under wine.There's a project devoted to run Symbian on off-the-shelf hardware, too.

* Download a very heavy C++ ide which was, till recently, locked down. You had to get a "professional" license if you wanted to do something useful. There is the "express" version but it was deliberately crippled. Oh yeah it only runs on Windows.

1) It's free now so what's the real problem? If you grieve because you had to pay in the past, then you should compare with how much the alternatives costed at the time.
2) It runs only on Windows? Well, everybody develops for the iPhone, whose SDK works only on OSX, which means even less machines than Windows. Anyway, the new Nokia-recommended SDKs for developing on Symbian work on Windows, Linux and OSX.
3) The "heavy C++ ide" is Eclipse, which was at the time one of the most used IDEs.
3) If you target Java, then you can use any IDE of your choice, you're not bound to use Nokia's heavy ide.

* If you wanted to distribute your app you had to get it signed.

Yeah, that's a pain, but every phone platform in the world won't accept unsigned apps without annoying the user to death. Some won't accept them at all. Still they seem quite successful.

* If you're a developer like me who is uncomfortable using a low level language you can go the Java route. Yeah. Write once, debug everywhere. It's a mess. I can't even get my midlet to get the IMEI code of the phone so I can use it for authentication.

Nokia did their job: they support the standard Sun APIs, and added specific APIs to access platform-specific features. Their phones will run unmodified JavaME JARs. What's specifically wrong with their Java implementation? They're even contributing a free virtual machine to the Symbian project. Btw I hear that System.getProperty("com.nokia.mid.imei"); will work on any S60 phone released after february 2007.

* A beautiful middle ground is Python for S60. I tried to install it recently on my Nokia N73. A huge bag of fail.

How exactly did it fail? It appears to work on my N73, and it's a 2006 phone. You have to sign the interpreter to access all phone features.

* Yeah sure Symbian is open source. I want to download the source, build it and run it. Have you read the instructions to get it up and running under Linux? Let's just say that it goes way over my head. I heard on a podcast that Nokia uses some kind of circuit board made by Texas Instruments. Ok, so I need to go get some specialized device just to run the kernel? Please.

You mean to be able to run it in an emulator? The emulator is currently windows-only, alas. Don't know if it works under wine.There's a project devoted to run Symbian on off-the-shelf hardware, too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOAP
http://blog.symbian.org/2010/06/01/ntt-docomo-releases-s2-devices/

To me, the biggest drawback is its popularity: the hardware is insanely fragmented. Want to write a Symbian app? Browse the device list http://www.symbian.org/devices

App developers have to support:
1) mix of touch and non touch screens
2) Insanely different display resolutions
3) Crazy list of hardware buttons (some have keyboards, some none, some have the 10 digit numeric, etc.)
4) Different form factors (clamshell, block, etc.)

Basically, writing a very good, elegant app that people WANT TO PAY FOR in Symbian is a disaster. Best to write for iOS and Android. Although both hardware platforms are fragmented they are not nearly as bad to deal with as Symbian. That, and there's a culture of "It's OK and normal to buy apps" (much more so on iOS than Android, of course) that doesn't appear to exist on other platforms (yet).

Both are dead ends.

Why develop serious applications for something that's only supported by a single manufacturer these days.

Right. Go see Symbian Foundation and click devices, then select year 2010 and apply. Which one of them is the single manufacturer that supports this open source platform?

Ok, I admit, I haven't tried.

> Please provide a link to a place where I can download symbian sources, build them,
> and upload them to a phone before you say anything this ridiculous again. "Not all
> of the code is yet available under open source licences". PURE FUD. STOP NOW.

However, I followed your link and one link deeper I find :

"Why haven't you made everything public?

Most of our code and tools code was originally contributed under the SFL. On 4th February 2010 we made all of our source code open source, however some tools code was not ready.

We promised to make all of our code available under the EPL by mid 2010. We made our source code available as soon as possible and hope to complete the full process ahead of schedule. We'll continue to publish information on Platform Completeness.
"

I guess it's debatable, but I would say that not including source code for some tools does not count as 'not open source' - it totally depends on what those tools are. I imagine there are tools Google use that aren't Open Source.

So, I stand by my interpretation.

IINM, the code is here :

http://developer.symbian.org/wiki/index.php/Making_Changes_with_Mercurial

I'm not quite sure what is missing and how it effects the ability to build it.

I don't have a link to where you can upload them to a phone...I'm not even sure what that means. I suppose you mean just instructions on how to do so. While relevant in the grand scheme of things, I don't see how that is a problem Symbian should be solving. What is the equivalent for Android? I suppose now Google have produced the Nexus one, they give instructions on uploading to or flashing that.

> You can use all those languages on Android as well via the NDK, but if you want a GUI you will have to touch Java.

We agree on that then. I've not tried GUI development on the new Symbian platform, only the previous S60 2nd and 3rd, and then only in Symbian C++, so I can't really speak to how accessible GUI development if you happen to choose those other languages.

http://developer.symbian.org/main/source/license/index.php says it's the tools code that currently isn't available, though I'm not sure what that specifically refers to. Also note from http://developer.symbian.org/wiki/index.php/Platform_Completeness :

"However, some technologies which were historically included in Symbian OS / S60 platform releases were distributed under specific commercial licenses and hence could not be included in the initial Symbian Foundation codebase. Essentially Nokia have contributed everything they can to the Symbian Foundation but some technologies are licensed from other companies and hence can't be included in the platform until discussions with those companies have been completed."

http://developer.symbian.org/main/source/license/index.php says it's the tools code that currently isn't available, though I'm not sure what that specifically refers to. Also note from http://developer.symbian.org/wiki/index.php/Platform_Completeness :

"However, some technologies which were historically included in Symbian OS / S60 platform releases were distributed under specific commercial licenses and hence could not be included in the initial Symbian Foundation codebase. Essentially Nokia have contributed everything they can to the Symbian Foundation but some technologies are licensed from other companies and hence can't be included in the platform until discussions with those companies have been completed."

Also, I think the underlying issue in this story is about Open Source (rather than Linux), and I think even Symbian is more Open Source than Android is.

Please provide a link to a place where I can download symbian sources, build them, and upload them to a phone before you say anything this ridiculous again. "Not all of the code is yet available under open source licences". PURE FUD. STOP NOW.

Symbian also gives you many more choices for development than Android - there's a whole wealth of programming languages to choose from.

You can use all those languages on Android as well via the NDK, but if you want a GUI you will have to touch Java.

Err:

http://www.android.com/
http://palmwebos.org/
http://www.symbian.org/
http://maemo.org/

You might not be able to publish iPhone apps (ignoring webapps) but it's not the only smartphone on the market.

http://www.symbian.org/

http://www.symbian.org/

It's as open as you can possibly get. I understand coding at the OS level is some C++ weirdness or something. But it's all there. Media freedom, OS freedom, works great, lots of apps.

Now what's left: Android, Meego, Palm, ...

Linux based? meh.

In case you missed it, Symbian went open source this month.

Unfortunately, the Symbian Foundation doesn't own any patents, so can't give them away to everyone. Certain patents are owned by SF member companies.

Membership of the Symbian Foundation costs a flat $1500 USD (+ VAT) per year, which grants your company access to the patents contributed by other members. The Eclipse Public License grants patent rights to software and software combinations only; the member patent policy additionally grants patent rights for software-hardware combinations. It's a drop-in-the-bucket cost for anyone making a device.

There is a copy of the patent policy available, for the lawyery type.

Unfortunately, the Symbian Foundation doesn't own any patents, so can't give them away to everyone. Certain patents are owned by SF member companies.

Membership of the Symbian Foundation costs a flat $1500 USD (+ VAT) per year, which grants your company access to the patents contributed by other members. The Eclipse Public License grants patent rights to software and software combinations only; the member patent policy additionally grants patent rights for software-hardware combinations. It's a drop-in-the-bucket cost for anyone making a device.

There is a copy of the patent policy available, for the lawyery type.

Their platform plan describes using QT in Symbian^4. I don't think that they are planning on dropping Symbian quite yet. Rather looks like they are modifying the platform instead and opening the development process along with it.

According to the FAQ you can now get all the source and can (at least theoretically) build the OS and various applications. Groovy.

Setting aside the fact that just building all of the pieces is complicated (see the FAQ), and also setting aside the fact that many phones will refuse to run homemade, un-signed builds, you might run into issues with patents:

Q: Is any of this code covered by patents? Can I get patent licenses from the Symbian Foundation?
A: Yes, some of the code implements techniques and ideas which may have been patented. Becoming a member of the Symbian Foundation entitles you to certain patent licences from other members as set out in our patent policy. For further information, please contact info@symbian.org.

Having the source under an open license is just one step on the path to personal control over your phone and freedom to use, share, and modify the software running on it.

The certificate is the only point of contact with Symbian- you're free to distribute the app via your own website or other sites like GetJar. At least they don't arbitrarily block applications the way Apple does from its store.
Since the topic here is concerned with amateur programming/hacking/tinkering, Symbian does provide OpenSigned certificates for personal use.
Since it's linked to your phones' IMEI, it means you can't distribute apps this way.

For commercial deployment, Symbian uses certificates to control what device capabilities can be accessed. You have to buy an annually renewable license whose pricing depends on how many device features your app requires.
(and you cannot register for a certificate using a public email provider like gmail or yahoo)

This has helped to greatly reduce mobile malware
at least for S60 3rd Edition- unsigned apps will not be installed, (and anyway you will always be prompted before anything gets installed, i.e. no drive by downloads)

One of the root CAs was leaked and there are Chinese websites where you can submit your IMEI number and get a self signing certificate (for installing hacked/cracked symbian apps).

Then again- if you choose to install potential malware after ignoring your phone's prompts, it's not the fault of Symbian.

Bottom line is, they have established a robust system of deploying trusted and verified apps for casual non technical users who won't mess with the device. And this has been around since 2006.

All this without creating a ludicrous single point Appstore with arbitrary rules.

The certificate is the only point of contact with Symbian- you're free to distribute the app via your own website or other sites like GetJar. At least they don't arbitrarily block applications the way Apple does from its store.
Since the topic here is concerned with amateur programming/hacking/tinkering, Symbian does provide OpenSigned certificates for personal use.
Since it's linked to your phones' IMEI, it means you can't distribute apps this way.

For commercial deployment, Symbian uses certificates to control what device capabilities can be accessed. You have to buy an annually renewable license whose pricing depends on how many device features your app requires.
(and you cannot register for a certificate using a public email provider like gmail or yahoo)

This has helped to greatly reduce mobile malware
at least for S60 3rd Edition- unsigned apps will not be installed, (and anyway you will always be prompted before anything gets installed, i.e. no drive by downloads)

One of the root CAs was leaked and there are Chinese websites where you can submit your IMEI number and get a self signing certificate (for installing hacked/cracked symbian apps).

Then again- if you choose to install potential malware after ignoring your phone's prompts, it's not the fault of Symbian.

Bottom line is, they have established a robust system of deploying trusted and verified apps for casual non technical users who won't mess with the device. And this has been around since 2006.

All this without creating a ludicrous single point Appstore with arbitrary rules.

Meanwhile, a girl might want to spend more than your toy's ticket price on a Symbian.

Haven't you heard? Symbian has been made Free by that rubber company.

Did they become founding member of Open Handset Alliance too?!?

They are also founding member of Symbian Foundation while they did impossible to recover damage to foundation by announcing they won't release any Symbian phone in 2010! They absolutely acted like a trojan hurting Symbian owners at the end.

http://www.symbian.org/members/member-directory

I think both foundations doesn't need them and they should give them a very public boot. It is not like they will produce anything serious with such corporate culture anyway.

No. Pick another platform which doesn't have such stupid limitations.

http://www.symbian.org/devices
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Handset_Alliance#Members
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/en-us/devices/default.mspx

Show some kind of dignity. Stop buying devices treating you like some sort of criminal, 50 IQ idiot, 10 year old kid. Posted from Quad Core G5 btw...

Sorry, that's complete crap; the Symbian roadmap has been public for months: almost 8 months since that blog post alone.

give you a couple of options on the auto-SMS that you can write yourself, i.e. "in a meeting right now," "at the theater," "soldering my fingers to the windowsill,"
Symbian OS. It's all there. It's been there for years.

or vary the auto-SMS depending on the caller?
Again, Symbian OS. Been there for years.

Apple is going to be sweating bullets in a year or so.
I'm going to be modded down for stating the obvious here, but the Symbian OS is years ahead of Apple in many technical ways and certainly more developer friendly. So, technically, the race was over before it started. But this isn't about being the better technical product.

Symbian is more open than ever, but Nokia doesn't advertise it like Apple in the U.S. and the American carriers may not like the fact Symbian is not the media/applications jail an iphone is. Hopefully, they will be a thorn in the side of Apple for years to come.

http://www.symbian.org/ (flash heavy, but you'll get passed it after a few layers)

Here: http://developer.symbian.org/main/source/browse/index.php

> Symbian is more a device controller than an O/S

I beg to differ. Nokia's S30 and S40 are operating systems which run on feature phones, and are much, much simpler than Symbian.

Symbian is a full fledged multitasking (threading) OS with a full driver model, virtual memory, all the bells and whistles, that you could even run on a netbook:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/20/symbian-foundation-boss-talks-up-symbian-for-netbooks-and-more/

Only the current S60 UI would need a little help (same as Android for example, UI also lacking for that). This should be addressed with the new QT UI, coming soon. See Symbian^4 here:
http://blog.symbian.org/2009/04/30/reviewing-the-release-plan/

I have never used an N97 personally, but I'm sorry to hear that you're having so much trouble with it. It is not the only Symbian-powered device in the world!

Bugs get fixed. Technology improves. It looks like Nokia will use Symbian as their smartphone OS, and have their MID class use Maemo. They are easily big enough to support both. Other Symbian Foundation member companies will improve the OS and use it on whatever devices they want to do. The Samsung i8910HD and Sony Ericsson Satio are another couple of current Symbian S60v5 phones, and as the platform moves forward as open-source software, anything could happen. Android's Dalvik VM could be ported to Symbian. That could be interesting!

As for the SDK, I think that it's built on Eclipse, and there's a GCC toolchain - maybe not with S60 5th Edition, but with Symbian^1 or Symbian^2 (the OSS releases). It takes time for a commercial product to adjust to a new open source life. Give a while. No harm.

Looks like you really wanted to click, out of two links, not the one with "OSS code" in its description, but the other - and trying to download things not yet open-sourced under Eclipse license (but somehow liberally available)

Try here: http://developer.symbian.org/oss/

Still?

http://developer.symbian.org/

Are you still confused now?

Hmm.

"Clone the package source code from version control" -> "The page you are trying to access is restricted to members of the Symbian Foundation."

Yes. I am still confused.

http://developer.symbian.org/
http://www.englishpage.com/verbpage/presentcontinuous.html

Are you still confused now?

PS. And please, don't give us that "I don't like it, therefore it's irrelevant" BS. Fact is, Symbian is the most used OS in mobile phones (at least in those where OS is of any concern to end-users). It will be migrating towards the segment currently occupied by S40. It will use Qt API (happy now?). Open sourcing it is very notable.

From your link :

Update: As Reggie has pointed out in the comments, Peter Schneider, Nokia's Maemo marketing guru, has put the brakes on this rumor via Twitter. "No, Nokia is not replacing Symbian with Maemo. Symbian and Maemo will continue to coexist." So much for intrigue, and romance.

Symbian has a release roadmap all the way to 2011. It's also open source now, so it will be updated for as long as there's a community interested in keeping it alive.

I think in the long run, Symbian's core will be replaced by some lightweight variant of Linux.

Yep, that's the plan! At least this is what they have said so far.

how come every time a new product is released, be it a cell phone, a toaster or a wrist watch, does some idiot have to ask the question 'does it run linux?'. This is only one step short of 'does it support Ogg?' in the big list of the world's stupidest questions.

Most new cellphones use Symbian which is a completely open OS developed by many of the world's major phone companies, who have a lot more experience of the requirements than the linux crowd who are only used to developing for x86. At the moment Linux is simply unsuitable for putting on a cellphone where power control and stability are paramount, something bigger like an IPAQ qith a GPRS jacket may support it but even this is not really necessary with the success of pocket pc for windows.

The other main contender for the smartphone market is smartphone2002which is already available in Europe running on the Orange SPV which has gone down to rave reviews. The beauty of this is that the thousands of windows CE programs which are already out there can be trivially ported to these phones without the need for slow and inefficient java code which is found on other systems. in addition you get Windows media player and internet explorer so you know that your phone will be compatible woith other existing sytems.

Yes Linux is cool, yes linux is good in some situations but don't recommend that it should run on everything under the sun just because linus Torvelds developed it.