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Nokia to Acquire and Open Source Symbian

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.

2 of 150 comments (clear)

  1. Re:They've been planning this for a long time by master5o1 · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    They buy Trolltech, then let us assume they are holding Qt ransom for DRM friendliness. Then they Open Source Symbian to try and gain our trust. I suppose.

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    signature is pants
  2. Re:I dont understand...... by Ash+Vince · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    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 features that the phones include.

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    I dont read /. to RTFA, I read /. to offend people in ignorance.