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Nokia to Acquire and Open Source Symbian

Posted by timothy on from the to-fight-an-android-you-must-become-one dept.

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.

4 of 150 comments (clear)

  1. They've been planning this for a long time by TuringTest · · Score: 5, Informative

    Nokia has been known for experimenting 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.

    --
    Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
    1. Re:They've been planning this for a long time by Constantine+XVI · · 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.

      --
      "I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
  2. Re:What about Sony? by superash · · Score: 5, Informative

    FTA: "Nokia will contribute Symbian and its S60 software assets to the foundation, while other members will put in their UIQ and MOAP software to create a new joint Symbian platform in 2009."
    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!

  3. Re:Awareness... by dave420 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Got their ass kicked? Was that a joke? Check out the market stats on Nokia phones, and you'll see how ridiculous that statement is.