Slashdot Mirror
Nokia Confirms Symbian Is No Longer Open Source
theweatherelectric noted an article on the H. From the article "Nokia has confirmed that it has closed the source code for the Symbian smartphone operating system. It says that despite it describing its new model for Symbian smartphone operating system development as 'open and direct' the 'open' part did not refer to 'open source' but to being 'open for business'. The 'open and direct' model is designed, according to Nokia, to 'enable us to continue working with the remaining Japanese OEMs and the relatively small community of platform development collaborators we are already working with.''"
OK stop.
I get it.
Some asshole said he was "open"
but he was only open for business
Anyone remember this lyrics segment from one of the OpenBSD release songs (a bonus track)
It's sad that what's a joke one day becomes reality in few years
Symbian division is gonna be shutdown within the next 2 - 3 years. What's the point of closing it now?
Rock on, bitches:
http://www.kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.php
Really, I like KDE. I like QT. I'm started to feel like Nokia is becoming something awful. I hope that if anything happens, KDE has enough developer power to keep QT going.
Yeah, I know: this is about Symbian, but really, does anyone think that Nokia is going to be working towards an Open (Source, not business) future?
This is exactly what happens when a Microsoft mole takes over a company. Past example:
-Rick Belluzo: while at HP, he announced to the press that HP would be "dumping HPUX" in favour of Windows NT (it wasn't true, and it did cause a panic of sorts). Windows NT 3.1, no less. Later, the mole moved on to SGI where he did precisely that: threw IRIX in the trash and attempted to shove Windows NT where it didn't belong. After thoroughly destroying SGI, he then moved to the Borg Cube itself, I'm sure with a big fat reward.
You gonna fix it this year you think? This has been going on for weeks now. You dirty incompetent fucks.
Is it even possible to close an open source project? If the license allows derivatives under the same license then would not the community create a Fork and start developing from that?
Fujitsu. Musashi-Nakahara office, actually.
Entire rows of programmers working late overtime, desperately trying to figure out how to get something working in Symbian. It was the most ridiculous thing I ever saw. Even more, in order to get into the office to talk to someone, you need to sign a release that permits you to view the Symbian source.
I'm sure Symbian is a source of income for Nokia, with unimaginative Japanese companies like Hitachi and Fujitsu stumbling over themselves trying to find new ways to get a return on their 10 year "experience investment". God forbid they actually try to build something that Docomo and AU didn't order them to build - the idea of building a phone for the gigantic foreign market never hit them, apparently.
As an side, my supervisor there was a intelligent lady who was chosen out of 400 applicants. Her response when I told her about the iPhone 2g? "Why would anyone use that? Won't it get finger prints all over it?"
Closing the source of such a poor operating system as Symbian may be a clever move. People might start to think that there is now some value in it. I used to program in it quite some years ago and my impression at the time (not changed since) was that it owed its position to being owned by Nokia, and being at the time was the only smart phone system on the market. Programming in it was not easy and took at least 4 times as long as programming Windows. I remember any kind of memory leak was forbidden, or the software wouldn't work. When I eliminated all the ones in my code I discovered that the OS calls I was making were themselves leaking. At that point I threw in the towel.
...dead.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
I'm not so sure. I think Microsoft is running their playbook just fine. They even have one of their own at the top.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Actually, they are following this guide: http://lwn.net/Articles/370157/
If Nokia close Qt, the community win.
If Nokia keep Qt open (but make it sucks), the community is destroyed.
Yes. And the exec that is making the calls is going to get out with a nice golden parachute and get all his Microsoft Stock Options back, while the people who own Nokia Stock are getting screwed.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Last year, I attended a meeting in Mountain View, CA hosted by Nokia to announce their new app store, Ovi, and 'open' platform based on JavaScript, the language everyone loves to hate. It seemed like a sincere attempt to recruit talented programmers to join a trip on the Titanic. There were a lot of sincere people making excuses and promising to do whatever it took to take on Microsoft. "We are the largest mobile phone company in the world, and we will respond accordingly," or something like that. I will say that the food was good.
They did respond like the largest mobile phone manufacturer, sinking their 'open' platform and joining up with the largest proprietary OS manufacturer. It is like a binary star system imploding into a black hole. Ironic, too, since Microsoft will buy RIM in Q4 for $39B, effectively screwing this deal. If this were fiction, then nobody would read it. Reality has such a wonderful way of making an acid trip seem like a lukewarm bath.
I'm still amazed at how the Microsoft trojan managed to work his way into Nokia so effectively. Someone must have let it happen.
Does anyone have any ideas as to what could have happened?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Not being Gnome isn't enough?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
That's only because their older phones are practically indestructible. Nokia seems rather determined to be on the way out at the moment.
They made almost two billion in profit last year. Microsoft paid them another billion to use Windows Phone 7 this year. They have about 15 billion in liquid assets (cash and short-term investments). They'd need to be spectacularly incompetent for a long time before they hit bankruptcy.
Nokia doesn't seem to be dying as a company, just dying as an interesting company.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Nokia Qt LGPL exception version 1.0: http://www.kde.org/community/whatiskde/images/nokia-agreement-9.jpg
I guess this has nothing to do with the Microsoft deal :)
Yup, the reality is that little that is done in major companies is done primarily for the company's benefit. What happens, happens because it will make a manager somewhere better off in some way (financially, psychologically, whatever). To the extent that company well-being is actually tied to rewards that may happen to also benefit the company, but that is usually a secondary consideration.
When some manager comes up with some crazy mandate that everybody knows will hurt the company, do they all raise a big protest? No way! They all get in there and write up at the end of the year how enthusiastically they implemented it so that they can collect their annual bonus. Then, when the next manager enthusiastically reverses the policy of the first one, everybody enacts that policy with equal vigor. Being bad for a company will never slow down a big initiative. Now, if the big initiative is bad for individual employees, then it will meet with resistance regardless of impact on the company.
Really? I don't know if it's different where you are, but here in the UK Nokia's presence in all the big phone stores is seriously down over the last 6 years.
They're not dead by any means, I grant you, but the days when everyone and his dog had a Nokia 3310 except for business users who were given a 6210 are long gone.