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Symbian Completes Transition To Open Source

Posted by timothy on from the still-a-contender-or-not dept.

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."

4 of 189 comments (clear)

  1. Drivers too, please! by sopssa · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  2. Pet peeve: "public domain" by QuoteMstr · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  3. http://maemo.org/ by Colin+Smith · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

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

     

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  4. Re:Seems like overkill by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

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