Symbian Foundation Says "Open Source Over The Next Two Years"
Published by Ewan Spence at 10:41 BST, June 24th 2008
The Symbian Foundation website is now online, and carries a few more details on the project. The big news is the commitment to move the platform to be open source (using the Eclipse Public Licence) and have this freely available to all. The foundation itself is set to commence operations in the first half of 2009, and the annual membership fee will be $1500. Until the open sourcing, membership will be the route to obtain the platform royalty free for device manufacturers. Naturally, membership is not required to develop for the platform, that remains open to all, just as it is now.
A white paper is also available from the site, and provides a time line of the five major events to come:
1: Nokia to acquire Symbian, with all the paperwork signed off by the end of 2008. Symbian employees will become employees of Nokia.
2. The independent and non-profit Symbian Foundation can then be set up, in the first half of 2009, with a clear mission to develop a unified platform from the technologies of S60, UIQ and MOAP.
3. Symbian Foundation then officially launches, with a royalty-free licence available to all members.
4. The unified platform will then be available to all foundation members at some point in the first half of 2010 (so Expect to see devices with this new platform from around Q3 of 2010 perhaps?) Until that point the existing Symbian OS 9.x platforms will be available to members under the royalty-free licence.
5. Over the next two years, expect to see more and more elements of the Symbian ecosystem available as Open Source under the Eclipse Public Licence 1.0; with the eventual goal of all the platform code being freely available to members and non-members alike.
More at the Symbian Foundation or download the White Paper (PDF).
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Categories: Software, Developer
Platforms: General, S60 3rd Edition, UIQ 3, MOAP
News Discussion
martinharnevie
1500 bucks per annum sounds slightly more overcomable than the EUR 1 million upfront it used to be....
I think this will really make Symbian attractive again for the niche players.
snoyt
How to milk an announcement twice? Once by you once by Steve?
In any case. It is again good news from Nokia ;-) If the largest mobile platform with whom most software and hardware developpers have experience becomes open and uniform it clearly is a significant step towards a major world standard. Nokia's strategic acquisitions of several companies with key experience in mobile internet services already showed their direction.
They not only wish to keep Nokia customers with their mobile platform with Ovi with Nokia phone oriented software facilities and best quality/price hardware.
They also mostlikely wish to attract and lure other platform users that use OVI services to switch to Nokia devices for an enhanced experience of their services.
Ewan
Milk the announcemet? Perhaps in some eyes, but a timeline to Open Source wasn;t in the earlier post, and we're gathering info and opinions as fast as possible to bring the news to you all. Tis a big day, we want to keep the news and flow as clear as possible
luarvique
I wonder how much application certificates are going to cost now ;)
neilhoskins
I'm unsure as to where this leaves S60? Does that become open source too? And what happens about security and Symbian Signed?
luarvique
I sincerely hope something bad happens to Symbian Signed. Something terminal. An extinction event.
snoyt
The biggest unclarity now remaining is wether Symbian Touch/S60 Touch will be included.
Cheers,
Snoyt
k.ewin
From the press conference it is pretty clear: S60 will be part of the new Symbian operating system and also be open sourced. What is unclear is the position of UIQ. Seems that UIQ is dying in favor of S60 Touch and the remains will be available to the Symbian Foundation.
stuclark
I suspect (as I said in a different comment) that S60 (or a derivitive) will win the day as the UI of the new unified offering, but I suspect some UIQ and MOAP technologies to be included in it.
For example, UIQs calendar and messaging apps are much better than their S60 counterparts.
martinharnevie
Quote:
Originally Posted by stuclark
For example, UIQs calendar and messaging apps are much better than their S60 counterparts.
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Correct. In fact they're much closer to S80, which in turn......
Unregistered
$234 million euros, and they can't bring you a decent HTML email client. Maybe in two years.
neilhoskins
Quote:
Originally Posted by martinharnevie
...much closer to S80, which in turn......
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OK, I'll be the one to say it... why do phone UIs and PIM apps have to be such PANTS compared with our old Psions?
No, no, there's something missing. Let's try again....
WHY DO PHONE UIS AND PIM APPS HAVE TO BE SUCH ***PANTS*** COMPARED WITH OUR OLD PSIONS???!!!
Mmmm.... that's starting to strike the right note.
lmk
no need to guess... in the white paper it's clearly stated that the new platform will be based on S60:
"A new platform is then to be formed from Symbian OS and S60 with selected UIQ and MOAP(S) technologies integrated."
svdwal
During the press conference it was mentioned that the "new platform" will be backwards compatible with Symbian 9.1+/S60 3rd ed, and that people can develop right now for the new platform, because of this backwards compatability.
In other words, the "new platform" is Symbian 9.1+/S60 3rd ed, with extra bits of UIQ 3.x and MOAP(S) added in such a way that there should be no backwards compatability issues. All existing S60 3rd ed apps should run just fine.
MLP
I think Nokia is taking the right step in this regard. But I also agreed that it is a little late for Nokia. New niche players like Apple and Google are gaining ground on Nokia's turf very strongly. As mobile phone market is no longer just for making calls or sms, it has become more like a mobile computing environment. Apple will have an upper hand as it owns both the hardware and software, including the design of core CPU chip used in iPhone.
It would have been better if Nokia is merged with HP or Dell to develop the next generation of mobile multimedia computing devices. Just my two cents of thoughts!
martinharnevie
Quote:
Originally Posted by MLP
New niche players like Apple and Google are gaining ground on Nokia's turf very strongly.
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Are they really? It's not reflected in any of Nokia's sales figures. And...hmm...how many devices have Google sold? Zero. And by selling zero devices they are already gaining ground on Nokia's turf? Interesting.
Let me put to you that you actually mean Apple and Blackberry, because the latter has actually sold some devices. Now, both of these are one-trick ponys. Apple is the UI pony and Blackberry the Email pony. They remain niche players for those people who are prepared to pay additional for their respective tricks.
Unregistered
quote:
Let me put to you that you actually mean Apple and Blackberry, because the latter has actually sold some devices. Now, both of these are one-trick ponys. Apple is the UI pony and Blackberry the Email pony. They remain niche players for those people who are prepared to pay additional for their respective tricks.
endquote
a better way to approach it is they are North american ponies, which have managed to deny Nokia any ground in the North American smartphone market. Now that both are competing worldwide, Nokia's smartphone sales will suffer. Carriers like bberry because they can stuff users with expensive bberry plans. Carriers like apple right now because it looks cool. What carrier don't like is Nokia, who is trying to compete directly with them. Smartphones are about distribution, and until Nokia improves they will be hurting.
AVR4000
Apple can only be a dangerous competitor if they release their "Mac OS X Smartphone Edition" for licensing and lets other manufacturers release devices with that OS.
Until that day Apple will remain a nische player. iPhone will not "overtake" other platforms as long itīs a device from only one company.
Windows Mobile and Symbian OS has nothing to be afraid of from Apple (that will change the day Apple is offering their OS to other companies).
I think the new Symbian OS will be optimized for different devices, lika "Symbian OS 10 Phone Edition", "Symbian OS Touch" and "Symbian OS Pro" with different applications installed (contacts/PIM and so on). The different "flawors" is compatible with each other, the differences is the UI with tweaks and optimizations for different devices. Such as support for qwerty shortcuts and so on.
I think the different editions will be lika this:
*Symbian OS Phone Edition: As todays S60. An UI for smartphones like the N-series. Touch support for devices with classic form factor and touch screen (for example the G900).
*Symbian OS Touch. Optimized for devices like the Neonode N1, Motorola A925, Sony Ericsson P900 and iPhone. Virtual keyboard and Haptikos is used.
*Symbian OS Pro. A system with an UI with elements from S80, S60 and UIQ. Optimized for qwerty devices with or without touch screens. Better PIM apps onboard compared to the Phone Edition. This edition is used in devices like the successors to the E71 and E90.
neilhoskins
I find this obsession with the American market rather arrogant, frankly. Personally I don't think it's a particularly large market compared with the emerging ones like India, China, and, pretty soon, Africa.
ares
AVR4000, i find your concept very attractive!!
krisse
Quote:
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I find this obsession with the American market rather arrogant, frankly. Personally I don't think it's a particularly large market compared with the emerging ones like India, China, and, pretty soon, Africa.
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You're absolutely right.
The US mobile phone market is disappointingly small, partly because Americans tend to buy cheaper more primitive devices than their European or Asian counterparts (that's why the first iPhone got away with being 2G), and partly because not as many Americans actually buy phones. They have one of the lowest mobile phone penetration rates in the developed world, possibly because of the very poor quality phone networks there and a rather backwards charging system (where else in the world do people have to pay to RECEIVE mobile calls?).
The emerging economy market is much, much bigger and growing at a much faster rate. Nokia's top two customers in both revenue and unit sales are China and India, and even Africa is playing an important part in the growth of the mobile market. Mobile manufacturers could easily afford to ignore America completely if they wanted to, and the significance of the US (and indeed the EU too) will become less and less over the coming decades.
Some people claim "where America goes, the rest of the world goes", but this just isn't true in the mobile world, in fact the reverse closer to the truth. Europe and Asia got 3G and 3.5G networks literally years before America, parts of America still run 1G analogue networks, and the US is one of the last places on the planet where people still buy unconnnected PDAs in large numbers while the rest of the world had already moved on to connected devices.
America leads the world in all sorts of ways, but mobile phones are not one of them.
jah
USA is a market. It is a market where Symbian has a low low share. So it should be a target. And the USA is quickly catching-up - evidence 3G iPhone. Okay Asia is bigger but can Nokia and SE really ignore the USA and leave it to LG/Samsung/Moto/Apple?
Unregistered
"can Nokia and SE really ignore the USA and leave it to LG/Samsung/Moto/Apple?"
40% global market share says Nokia can...
robgreb
Unregistered
"$234 million euros, and they can't bring you a decent HTML email client. Maybe in two years."
Here we go again, another one completely misses the point. Symbian/S60 is a platform on which developers can provide decent html email clients, and they have done exactly that. Strong development community you see. I have a decent html email client on my S60 phone, why don't you? Nokia could easily develop the key apps for smartphones, they choose not to for good strategic reasons. Seems that strategy is too much for some people.
If Nokia provided the best apps out of the box then where would that leave developers? The developer community is important to an open API OS like Symbian/S60.
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