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Symbian Foundation Takes First Step In Open Sourcing Mobile OS
readthemall writes to let us know that the Symbian Foundation has released the first of several packages in their plan to open source the entire Symbian mobile OS. "On Wednesday, Symbian made available its first package covered by the EPL, the OS Security Package, according to Symbian developer Craig Heath. 'The OS Security Package source code is now available under the EPL, and it is the very first package to be officially moved from the closed Symbian Foundation License (SFL) to... the EPL,' Heath wrote in a blog post. Heath said the EPL would allow the security package to bypass export regulations in the UK, where the Symbian code is legally based."
Posting to undo accidental mod.
Eric felt his scrotum contract in its latest desperate attempt to keep his testicles warm. This hospital, wherever it was, was damned drafty.
It didn't help that the nurses on his floor, who had been treating Eric like a complete bitch, liked to keep the air conditioning cranked up. Or was it just his room? He noticed they pulled their cardigans and sweaters around them only when they came to see him.
"Nurse! Nurse!" Eric shouted. "Excuse me, nurse?!"
Eric heard a chair creak, followed by footsteps coming down the hall. They were quick around here, one of the only good things Eric had yet noticed. Perhaps it was because of his celebrity status.
"Yes?" the nurse said, crossing her goose-pimpled arms.
"Nurse, it's damn cold in here," Eric said. "And I think my pain medication is wearing off. Can I have some more pills?"
Her beady eyes, set atop wrinkled, puffy cheeks, lasered him in his bed. This was the sixth time Eric had shouted for her since her shift began. She didn't know him well but she was definitely starting to hate him.
"Oh! And my urinal needs emptied!" Eric added.
The nurse pursed her lips and folded her arms without breaking eye contact, "get fucked" in body language.
Eric smiled a crooked, leering grin at her and winked in a bid to charm her into emptying his piss. The nurse wondered if he was about to have another seizure.
She picked up Eric's chart, flipped through it, and replaced it.
"Mr. Raymond," the nurse said, "you're not due for more pain medication for two more hours."
Eric's mustache, orange and drooping, twitched.
"Do you need your bandages looked at?"
Eric shifted in his bed, stiff and uncomfortable. He slowly, awkwardly, stretched his hospital gown down over his knees.
"Nooo, no, no I don't," Eric said. "My bandages are just fine."
"Fine then," the nurse said. "I'll get your urinal. Do you need anything else?"
Eric watched as the nurse lifted his urinal carefully off of his lunch tray. It was completely full1,000 cubic centimeters, one full quart of piss and mounding at the top.
The nurse stifled a gag as she slowly made her way into the restroom.
"This damn IV has me swimming!" Eric called after her with a quick laugh.
He heard her pouring his urine into the toilet and felt the urge to go again. It had been dark brown, viscous, and smelled to high heaven like sick wet meat. He really hoped whatever they had him on was working.
She returned from the restroom and replaced Eric's urinal.
"I'll be back when it's time for your medication," she said. "Dinner is in an hour."
With that she left until, she knew too well, the next time Eric grew bored or irritated.
Feeling as anxious as ever, Eric reached for billywig, his blueberry iBook, which had finally charged. He hit the start button and watched Yellow Dog Linux slowly crawl off of the hard drive into RAM.
Thank god this hospital had wifi. Thank god he had an Airport card in his iBook.
http://www.google.com/search?q=brown+piss
"Nope."
http://www.google.com/search?q=my+piss+is+brown
"Hmm Nope."
http://www.google.com/search?q=my+piss+is+brown+std
"Nope."
http://www.google.com/search?q=my+piss+is+brown+and+smells+like+rotting+meat+std
Eric was having no luck. The more he optimized his Google searches, he noted with alarm, the less relevant his search hits became.
whats the point of this if all apps need to be signed by an external authority?
Look, that's definitely good news (especially the part of the Symbian Foundation using EPL instead of inventing some special license of their own). But does it really matter that much now? I mean that writing apps for Symbian is a horrible experience (as has been highlighted multiple times here on Slashdot, too), and now that Android has arrived and brought a much more friendly programming environment, this step is too little, too late.
With Symbian and Android now free, what is the reason for even producing a Windows Mobile handset anymore? I mean, why pay extra for a license when you can just customize your own OS for next to nothing?
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Imagine a giant penis flying towards your mouth, and there's nothing you can do about it. And you're like "Oh man, I'm gonna have to suck this thing", and you brace yourself to suck this giant penis. But then, at the last moment, it changes trajectory and hits you in the eye. You think to yourself "Well, at least I got that out of the way", but then the giant penis rears back and stabs your eye again, and again, and again. Eventually, this giant penis is penetrating your gray matter, and you begin to lose control of your motor skills. That's when the giant penis slaps you across the cheek, causing you to fall out of your chair. Unable to move and at your most vulnerable, the giant penis finally lodges itself in your anus, where it rests uncomfortably for 4, maybe 5 hours. That's what using Symbian is like.
this step is too little, too late.
Cos several hundred million phones produced by the largest phone manufacturers in the world are all just going to go away. Are you living on Android world?
This is interesting and welcome news.
Deleted
With Symbian and Android now free, what is the reason for even producing a Windows Mobile handset anymore?
The Microsoft kickbacks, of course.
Otherwise you'd just run Android, I don't see the appeal of free Symbian myself when you could have something more modern and with better application potential.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So this is a portable version of that vibrating thing? Oh, sorry, never mind...
For developers looking to make money, and use a very rich set of APIs/functionality, Symbian is the way to go. Gartner recently announced that Symbian has 49.5% of ww smart phone market share (300m+ devices). The distribution channel potential is there for developers to take advantage of now - not some unknown time in the future. Note that Symbian also has Runtime dev environments for Web, Python, and Adobe Flash Lite - who else has that?
I'll quote the wiki: "Symbian OS kernel (EKA2) supports sufficiently-fast real-time response such that it is possible to build a single-core phone around itâ"that is, a phone in which a single processor core executes both the user applications and the signalling stack. This is a feature which is not available in Linux. This has allowed SymbianOS EKA2 phones to become smaller, cheaper and more power efficient.[citation needed]"
Is that even true? If not, we should take it up on the discussion page.
Res publica non dominetur
Precursor to Symbian the Psion OS had Calendar.app superior over todays calendar apps.
According to this EPL and GPL are incompatible due to diferening patent restrictions, however if there are no patents covering the code (or the patents are invalid), could the code be linked and redistributed under either
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
I'll believe it's open source when I see it running fully on third party hardware. An Android handset would be an interesting choice.
Nokia/Symbian already proved their mastery in Software Interface designing with their S40 and S60 Platforms. If they could extend it further, they will challenge Microsoft's dominance in Netbook OS market. Nokia's recent partnership with Intel triggers speculation in this regard.
Love me or leave me. Hey, where's everybody going?
No, really.. with all that is out there now is this that big of a deal? Perhaps it is, which is why i ask.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
All solution I've tested were buggy, outdated, cumbersome to install, at least partially closed, required huge downloads and anal probes under the form of license agreeements.
It's about two years I've given up developing anything for cellphones under Linux, still I hope one day we'll have some free and decent dev system to allow us writing at least basic applications.
Symbian World has settled on S60 V3 for a long time with the V5 (touch based) things getting popular for people using and enjoying a full touchscreen device. V3 and V5 doesn't differ too much.
Looking to future, it seems gaining a community&users with S60 V3 and keeping an eye open for Trolltech Qt UI makes sense. Of course one must not forget the Symbian handsets have surprisingly good, compatible J2ME with all kind of features you may want.
Qt will also bring discipline to scene. Obviously huge load of KDE 4 apps will be there and nobody will dare to code a trivial junk and put 20 dollar price tag. Those days are over soon.
S80 (9xxx) and UIQ3 has always been special anyway and the day E90 shipped with S60, S80 was dead. I tell as owner of S60 V3, S80 and UIQ3 handsets. Wouldn't it rock if UIQ3 lived and was even chosen of base of Symbian foundation? Of course but there are sad facts like huge S60 has developer support, market of thousands of apps and documentation. Motorola and Sony wasted UIQ3 but it seems their smart phone business got wasted too. No developer or user would trust them no matter whatever they ship.