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

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.

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.

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: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: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.