Nokia Starts Open Source Website

X-Fade writes "Nokia launched OpenSource.nokia.com today. It is the first place to look for information concerning Nokia involvement in the Open Source community. The Projects page lists all Nokia developed downloadable code including: Maemo (Development platform for Linux based handhelds), MobileNews (Mobile NNTP reader), Python for S60, Sofia-SIP (SIP User-Agent library) and more. The website also features a list of all projects Nokia contributed to."

Comments

Ipso?

[ponds]

Wake me up when Nokia open-sources Ipso.

Re:Ipso?

[Saiyine]

Nokia IPSO is an appliance-optimized, security-hardened, clusterable OS capable of supporting a wide range of Nokia and partner security applications.

More info here.

Re:Ipso?

[convolvatron]

i was one of the engineers on ipso. its not completely useless,
its lovely to do network level code in, and it was about 2x faster
than the freebsd it was based on (1.2) in forwarding speed. it
had decent custom routing protocol implementations.

but there really isn't any need for a seperate implementation
any longer. really. all you would be doing is losing out on
drivers. i think its lived just as a marketing token, a random
differentiator. and nokia can vaugely feel they got something
from buying ipsilon. i always hear about internal struggles to
replace it with linux, and remain thoroughly suprised it hasn't
happened yet.

Re:Ipso?

[MarkKnopfler]

I worked with networking code in IPSO for some time on the P022 machines and found it a rather nice thing to work with. It is sturdy and does its job well. If there are internal struggles to actually replace it with a newer OS I do not understand why there is no opinion to move it to a NetBSD or FreeBSD and why linux ? Any definite advantages ?

GroupThink Alert!

[42Penguins]

The OSS browser supports DRM, oh noes!

What category does Nokia go in now that they have a open source site?
Are they formerly evil turned good, like IBM? (wait...do we like ibm this week?)
Or are they the antichrist, posing as good?

Most. Confusing. Finns. Ever.

looks promising

[idlake]

Maemo looks great, both technically and the way they are going about setting it up. I particularly like the fact that they have built their environment on top of X11, which means that it will be much easier to port custom software to it than with Qt/Embedded devices.

Python for the S60 is nice, too, of course.

Altogether, I'm wondering whether Nokia is planning on moving their entire phone line over to Linux at some point.

Re:looks promising

[Anonymous Coward]

very interesting article from an ex-yahoo and founder of a new open mobile technology: http://bluepulseblog.blogspot.com/

Not everything

[JuniorJack]

I am still waiting to see the FPS-10 service box sources, that is entirely based on Linux kernel. For people that have no idea, this box is sold by Nokia to their authorized service centers and is used to repair/tune/check faults in
all Nokia mobile handsets.

For downloading anything..

[Anonymous Coward]

..registration is required. Luckily bugmenot has some valid accounts, for example: harryman84/blahblah, kutzooi23/nokianokianokia, bugmenot2/passworded

Where are the hacks?

[MLopat]

Oh yeah I'm really excited. I can look at all the cool toys I can't load onto my phone because my local provider has locked them out. Hope they make the site actually useful for us and maybe post a link or two about how to get a cable for a particular Nokia handset and the cracks to circumvent the locking mechanisms installed by the retailers.

Re:Where are the hacks?

[puto]

howardforum.com anything and everything you need to know. Sorted by carrier and phone. You can ask and receive any answer you need there.

And as for unlocking phones. Well go for it, all my have the hidden features enabled, and I work for the largest cell carrier in the US. Did I get the answers from work, nope. Got them from the web.

Here is the issue. The features are generally locked because they are untested, are have no bearing on what service your provider is selling you. Also if you flash firmware, or in general screw some of the software up, and the phone goes tits up, you will not be under warranty anymore.

I spend a fair amount of my time explaining to customers if they flash something to the phone motorola, or nokia did not write, and their phone is no longer working. IT is not a warranty issue, because it is out of spec for the device.

I doube Nokia would post a crack, because when a phone is warrantied through a carrier, it is then warrantied generally back to the manufacturer. So nokia would be shooting itself in the foot.

Cables you can find anywhere on the net, hell best buy in the us sells a kit with cables and software that lets you get into about 99.9% of all phones on the market.

Just do it at your own risk.

Puto

Re:Where are the hacks?

[gormanly]

Absolutely brilliant, Nokia PC Suite. This is the one thing that they should product an Open Source version of - but then until recently they didn't even have a Mac equivalent.

The current version, and its 3 predecessors, are the slowest, buggiest bit of crud on any of my machines - Nokia Audio Manager crashes on both my Athlon 64 and Sempron 64 boxes unless I delete cdmgr.dll, and only recognised phones during the install phase on my K6-2 box until I bought an add-in USB card and disabled the motherboard USB controller.

Support are a nightmare too - they were haughty to the point of rudeness, and refused to discuss the issue last November unless I upgraded to Win XP SP2!

Even when it does work (which seems to be random, and varying with versions - 6.6 does not work for me at all), copying between phones and PCs is like watching treacle dry, whether using IR, Bluetooth or the £30 cable I eventually bought after the frustration of many dropped connections with the wireless options.

Despite the phone itself being very nice, I'm never buying another Nokia - they just can't be arsed to provide decent software or support...

Re:Ipso Faxso

[ponds]

Ipso is not for PDAs. While most people know Nokia as a mobile vendor, they are also one of the largest Firewall/VPN appliance vendors. Ipso is a highly optimized i386 OS based on NetBSD.

Re:nokia is going to loose ground.

[puto]

As always, I fly a desk for the largest cell carrier in the us.

Nokia does not offer a really good device with PDA like functionality. Mainly because Nokia sticks to making phones that make and take calls. And above all tend to be high quality and last for years and years.

Personal milage may vary. But I would say most Nokia customers are die hard. Nokias phone have an ease of use unlike many others, and a 1999 nokia will function like a 2005 one.

And most people want a phone to make and receive calls. That is it. Treos and PPC phones are a very small margin of our business. Blackberries a bit larger, but I would even to say people buy blackberries these days for cool factor. PDA phones are the mortarboards of the MBA.

Now throw the techie guy, the really techie guy 35 years plus, the network engineer, software gury, unix freak, he wants a simple little phone, cause he has realized that life is more than futzing around with gear when he is not at work.

From the fire lines customers want a simple phone, no bells and whistles. Camera phones, no one hardly uses but once or twice.

Motorola tried the MPX220, can we say recall and retool. We had to replace them with audiovox mobile units, never mpx is a better phone.

Treo 650, most are utter crap. You might have a good one, but I still get one escalation a day, because something just will not work.

Pocket PC phones, the Siemens Sx-66, great phone, bit large, comes unlocked out the box. Very little complaints, we actually farm them out to the really upset 650 customers in place of.

But back to your statement, Nokia has made its mark, and they will always have a large portion of the phone business, and they move slowly, but they do things right because of it.

As for OSS on phones. Well one day.

Puto

Are you sure?

[labratuk]

Nokia Starts Open Source Website

Wow! A website? These people are serious.

Re:nokia is going to loose ground.

[adtifyj]

I realise you are not critising OSS, and you raise a lot of interesting points about Nokia, but I would like to point out that when large companies announce they are jumping on the open source bandwagon, they are not hoping the OSS community helps them add zero's to the balance sheet.

They are buying kudos with two very important groups: CTOs and engineers in the industry. Of course they may also encourage external participation, and accept patches, but that is rarely the primary focus. A sub-domain listing open source sends a number of very clear statements about the company. here are a few..

• Microsoft does not have them on a leash,
  
• Interoperability is not just a buzzword on their marketing material,
  
• An appreciation that open source software underpins everything in I.T. these days. 5 years ago, most CTOs didn't realise this. Now, sensible CTOs wants to know that every staff member at the vendor is aware of this fact, otherwise they will be working with fools who have "not invented here" syndrome and other related ailments.
  
• The board of the company has embraced the economic advantages of open source.
  
• They allow and encourage engineers to work on open source tools in order to perform their jobs. With a website like this, Nokia's HR department would be flooded with quality resumes.
  
• The brain-power of the engineering department is worth showcasing.
  

Re:Nokia's approach

[bLanark]

I am now boycotting Nokia - I will never buy another Nokia phone. (In fact, I took a couple of Nokia chargers in to work today - I'll never need them again.)

My reason for this is their stance on Software Patents in the EU - they lobbied hard for them. See, for example, The Register or The FFII. I contacted them (by email, IIRC) to tell them my position, but never heard anything back.

For them to launch an open-source website is simply an attempt to gain some PR, or, put another way, some community "kudos". And, for goodness' sake, starting a web site does not require a huge investment. This is a PR exercise, through-and-through.

What Google did, for example, will probably help a lot more.

Re:nokia is going to loose ground.

[DrSkwid]

lose
a lot
hail mary
hedge bets

I'm a zealot but I can't see an attack in your post.

Nokia have people working hard as OSS developers, just like Red Hat et.al.

Perhaps you forget one of the OSS mantra's Release Early, Release Often

I'm not convinced about business users wanting an uber featured handset.
I have a Nokia 6600.
It connects to my IMAP account.
It connects to IM services (SMS, AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, IRC etc. etc.)
I can use it as an SSH terminal via Putty.
It has a great camera and MMS services.

I'm not sure what other features you would want on a 240x320 screen. Web browsing is painful.

It is not features here that inhibit takeup, it's the cost of data calls.

In the UK the cost of data ranges from the cheapest at around $100 per month for 1Gb of data up to $3 per Mb.

Re:Nokia's approach

[elfguygmail.com]

As much as I agree with you on software patents, Nokia did have a point. If the US has software patents and is using them agresively (and we know they are), if the EU bans its companies from having any, then european companies have a very real problem. Even if they come up with new ideas, they can't be patented and in the US they will be. The solution is to get rid of software patents everywhere.

Re:Nokia's approach

[Bulmakau]

You boycott Nokia? But you just love google? Come on! Get real
Google doesn't have a patent on their software?? They have many (http://informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtm l?articleID=172901917). This is plain silly. And the $350K, tax exampt, self serving, PR.. Not very different from Nokia's site, only more effective with students and workd press alike.
Nothing wrong at all with software patents, as long as they are use appropriately (just like non-software patents). You don't like patents? Want to boycott companies that use them? Boycott google. Boycott Microsoft. Boycott your PC manufacturer. Boycott your food makers, electrical devices. Boycott the modern world basically.
Boycott Nokia though. It is your right, and since it is idiological one I fully support it (even if I think the reason is silly). But my suggestion is, treat all companies in the same way. Boycott all companies that use patents. Only thing is, you will be left with a very clean desktop.