Symbian Completes Transition To Open Source

Grond writes "Symbian, maker of the the world's most popular mobile operating system, has completed the transition to a completely open platform months ahead of schedule. While the kernel was opened up last year, the entire platform is now open source, primarily under the Eclipse Public License. A FAQ is available with more information about the platform opening." Adds an anonymous reader, linking to PC Magazine's story on the transition: "By putting Symbian fully in the public domain, the Symbian Foundation is pitting it against Google's Android. Symbian is well known across most of the world, but it's mostly a foreign curiosity in the US, AT&T is the only carrier that currently has a symbian phone in its lineup, the Nokia E71x."

Comments

Drivers too, please!

[sopssa]

Since Nokia is phone manufacturer itself and main supporter of Symbian, I really hope they open source their drivers for different phones too. Nokia is already moving in that direction with Qt and it doesn't impact their main business as a phone manufacturer. Only problem would be if those drivers use licensed patents from other manufacturers though.

Android being open source is practically useless because you cannot get drivers for any phone. Sure you can see the OS code and tinker around it (if you are able to get overly complex development environment set up), but you are unable to use it on your phone or do pretty much anything with it. It's only good for phone manufacturers.

If Nokia also were to release drivers for their phones, this would be huge victory against Android.

"By putting Symbian fully in the public domain"

[Anonymous Coward]

Except they didn't, in any sense of the term, put it in the public domain.

Re:"By putting Symbian fully in the public domain"

[broken_chaos]

People these days, with all the overloading talk of "intellectual property" don't even know what "public domain" means. I see it all too often with my friends and family. It's getting to the point that copyright is so overreaching (and has been for so long), that few people even know what it means when a work no longer is under copyright.

That said, having Symbian under an open source licence is definitely a nice thing.

Pet peeve: "public domain"

[QuoteMstr]

Placing code under an open-source license is not the same as putting it in the "public domain". Code under an open source license still has conditions attached to it (even if minimal ones) while code placed in the public domain has no restrictions placed on it of any sort. Code under an open-source license is still copyrighted, but with a permissive license that allows one to do some things normally reserved only for the work's copyright holder. By contrast, a work in the public domain is not covered by copyright law at all.

Re:Pet peeve: "public domain"

[Antidamage]

In the coming war between Open Source and Public Domain, no man will be free as in beer.

Re:Still need signed apps though don't I

[caffeinemessiah]

If it's so freakin' open please tell me why I still need to have apps signed on my Nokia 6220 classic and will do for the foreseeable future unless I'm willing to try risky hacks.

I'll raise you an anecdote. I just bought a Nokia E63, new and unlocked with a full US warranty for $189 from Newegg, and it's one of the best phones I've ever owned. You simply go to the application manager menu, and for the option that says "Install only signed apps", select "No". It's that simple. I just installed an unsigned FTP client, so now I don't even need Nokia's atrocious PC Suite for syncing.

http://maemo.org/

[Colin Smith]

It's even Linux. Hell, it's Debian.

http://maemo.nokia.com/n900/

 

Re:http://maemo.org/

[Max Littlemore]

Yeah, I have just ordered a new N900 to replace my G1. The G1 is being only replaced because I dropped it a few too many times and it got flaky. I am moving from Android partly because the only way I have found to make the most of the hardware I own is to run a bunch o' hacks, I am more comfortable running a bunch o' hacks on Debian/Linux than Android, and partly because I can't find another Android phone with a flip out keyboard I like.

From what I have read, Nokia are dropping Symbian from future N series smart phones, so basically this announcement means that they are open sourcing their low end crappy OS which has pretty much failed in the smart phone space.

I vowed never to own another Symbian device when my last Nokia was retired a year ago. It is painfully limited and obscure and I don't see how opening up the source code will help when there is such a strong alternative in Maemo which already benefits from the familiarity of Linux/X/Qt. Waste of time, Nokia.

As an aside, and a bit off topic, I am interested in the AndroidExecutionEnvironment that was being developed for Ubuntu. A (hopefully) simple port to maemo would mean I could still run my favourite Android apps.

Re:http://maemo.org/

[Toy G]

Maemo is suffering from the US-centric view of the average IT media. It's simply the best smartphone OS... because it's not a phone OS, it's a full desktop OS with a phone-friendly UI, more or less like the iPhone. But differently from the iPhone, it's a standard Linux, it's open to all sorts of hacks, and you don't have to pay rent to develop for it (at least not yet). I have one, and it's mind-blowing. I can run anything I want without worrying about "jailbreaking" and other absurd locks. Once the price goes down a little, it will become the perfect device for, well, almost anything. (Yeah, the screen is resistive, but the quality and resolution... man, the iPhone looks very cheap in comparison).

What is holding Maemo back, at the moment is:
- the above-mentioned US-centric attitude
- fear. Many in Nokia are scared of dropping their old Symbian workhorse, which is still immensely profitable even if it managed to irritate almost every single user it ever had, and never managed to establish a decent ecosystem of third-party developers. They are afraid that Maemo (an untested platform in the wider market) might fail, so they don't allocate enough resources to it, which leads to unpolished releases, which in turn means they don't feel confident enough to push Maemo-based devices as hard as they should...
- internal politics. In Nokia, Symbian is the establishment, the cash-cow, the power, the suits, the veteran developers; Maemo is the skunkwork geek project, youthful and technically light-years ahead, but bringing a revolution in how things are done, with an unclear business model... not everyone is on board yet. Sometimes the friction shows.

Re:http://maemo.org/

[Mulder3]

"(...)so basically this announcement means that they are open sourcing their low end crappy OS which has pretty much failed in the smart phone space." ARE YOU SERIOUS??? Symbian is the leading(not the best, but surely, is the leading) Smartphone OS... Actually, there is more Symbian smartphones in the world that Android+iPhone combined... If you don't believe me, check the numbers... (Worldwide, not only US numbers) Just because Symbian is not popular in the US, doesn't mean it ist't popular at all... To you guys, US people, the concept of smart phone is new, i know(mainly because of your crappy cell phone market) but in Europe, smartphones is really not a new thing... I had my first Smarphone 6 years ago... A Nokia 7650(Symbian)

Re:Seems like overkill

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, that company needs to change its name. I can't read that name without thinking of that weird saddle/vibrator thing.

The FAQ warns about software patents...

[Qubit]

According to the FAQ you can now get all the source and can (at least theoretically) build the OS and various applications. Groovy.

Setting aside the fact that just building all of the pieces is complicated (see the FAQ), and also setting aside the fact that many phones will refuse to run homemade, un-signed builds, you might run into issues with patents:

Q: Is any of this code covered by patents? Can I get patent licenses from the Symbian Foundation?
A: Yes, some of the code implements techniques and ideas which may have been patented. Becoming a member of the Symbian Foundation entitles you to certain patent licences from other members as set out in our patent policy. For further information, please contact info@symbian.org.

Having the source under an open license is just one step on the path to personal control over your phone and freedom to use, share, and modify the software running on it.

Re:Too little, too late

[oh2]

Nokia has Maemo as well, which is better than Android in so many ways. Try a N900 and you will see. There is no reason for them to go Android,

I always want to read that as "Sybian"

[Nimey]

I personally blame the Internet and rule 34.

Re:AT&T's other phones

[koiransuklaa]

S40 is not based on Symbian.

So much blah

[thaig]

I am biased as I work "with it" every day.

It's written in C++ and the syscalls are asynchronous by default (very very nice when you're doing lots of comms). It has a microkernel and an extremely comprehensive api. It's even written in C++. The kernel is actually quite nice.

So *actually* Linux is a dinosaur by comparison if you consider modern-ness to be of any importance.

I don't but and I like linux a lot but Symbian is an operating system that deserves respect and it's dumb to believe that everything has to be done "one true way". The user-level programming experience is not nice due to the great efforts made to fit it onto early phone hardware (since it has been out there long before 600Mhz ARM chips arrived that could shift the weight of Linux or OSX).

But all of that's changing and as a result of pretty gargantuan efforts that few pundits have any appreciation of that this rough diamond is being cut and will dazzle.

Nokia's share is increasing, not decreasing

[mdwh2]

I'm not sure there's much evidence that Nokia are losing any ground? For last quarter of 2009, their sales were up 22%, their profits almost doubled, and their market share increased to 39%; in the "smartphone" market, their share increased from 35% to 40% .

The "big names" you mention are still niche players in the phone market (except perhaps RIM; admittedly they should also worrying about Android, not because of Google phones directly, but because the rest of the phone manufacturers such as Motorola may switch to Android; but Apple are a non-issue here).

Re:Too little, too late

[cbope]

You are vastly underestimating Nokia and Maemo. As another poster has already mentioned, once Nokia moves past their current Symbian (cash cow) vs. Maemo (new kid) stage and puts their full weight behind Maemo, Maemo will become a dominant player in the smartphone market. I have no doubt of this.

Believing that Nokia will not succeed is a very limited US-centric view. True, they are just not as strong a player in the US as in the rest of the world. But, remember that Nokia still has the most market share worldwide, far, far more than Android/Google or Apple today. While certainly the "A" teams are growing, they have a long way to go to even begin to compete with the installed base of Nokia. And consider that innovation from Nokia is starting to pick up steam again, especially in the smartphone market outside the US.

Symbian will be replaced by Maemo in the high end smartphone market. I've owned many Symbian based phones over the years and generally they have worked well, although sometimes the UI has been a little slow. I don't dislike Symbian, but I believe it's nearing the end of it's useful life when considering the possibilities of Linux-based Maemo.