Symbian Operating System, Now Open Source and Free

[Ric_NYC]

The source code for the ten-year old Symbian platform will be completely open source and available for free starting Thursday. The transition from proprietary code to open source is the largest in software history, claims the Symbian Foundation.

“The dominant operating system provider out there is Symbian,” says Lee Williams, executive director of the Symbian Foundation, “and now we are offering developers the ability to do so much more.”

Symbian, which powers most of Nokia’s phones, has been shipped in more than 330 million devices worldwide. But in the last few years, Symbian has seen more than its fair share of changes. In 2008, Nokia, one of Symbian’s largest customers, acquired a major share in the company. Nokia then created the Symbian Foundation to distribute the platform as an open source project, and began the process of opening up the source code that year.

Meanwhile, the operating system has seen new rivals crop up. Google’s Android, which is based on a Linux kernel, has become a favorite among handset makers such as Motorola and HTC. And it’s based on an open source foundation too.

Symbian’s move to open source has been completed four months ahead of schedule and it offers mobile developers new ways to innovate, says Williams. Any individual or organization can now take, use and modify the Symbian code for any device, from mobile phone to a tablet.

Similar as it may sound to Android’s promise, there are major differences, says Williams.

“About a third of the Android code base is open and nothing more,” says Williams. “And what is open is a collection of middleware. Everything else is closed or proprietary.”

Symbian is also ahead of Android in that it will publish its platform roadmap and planned features up to 2011, he says. And anyone can influence that roadmap or contribute to new features.

“Open source is also about open governance,” says Williams. “It’s about letting someone other than one control point guide the feature set and the asset base.”

But will that be enough for Symbian to steal away customers lured by a snazzier and younger rival?



Read More http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/02/symbian-operating-system-now-open-source-and-free/#ixzz0eXavMT76

[Sporkman]

This is big!

[Ozor Mox]

Wow, this really is great news. The shift towards open source for mobile phone operating systems is getting stronger and stronger, with Android (mostly), Maemo and now Symbian.

[cguy]

Good news!
Let's hope its quality will improve really fast.

[Georgia boy]

http://ww2.cox.com/myconnection/arizona/today/news/science-and-tech/article.cox?moduleType=apNews&articleId=D9DLEPEO1


Hi. Don't know if anyone has read anything about this yet or not. Thought it was interesting article.

Tom

[solitaire]

heard about this a while ago (the fact Nokia was making some of Symbian Opensource)

Hopefully the code will help developers make a synch program for s60 phones that's easy and works!!!

^__^

[jrusso2]

I heard about this a while ago but was wondering what was going on with it. Symbian is the largest mobile phone OS in the world but its also one of the oldest.

Android now thats really interesting.

[Sporkman]

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1398015

[jpeddicord]

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1398015

[merged]

[Kemono]

I guess that's the only way they'll make better money than Google's Android. Or at least get on their level. Who knows?

EDIT: Oh yeah, iPhone too.

[arnab_das]

this is a welcome move, which needed to be taken to tackle the increasing no of apps out there for the iphone. hope this opens the doors for developers worldwide to create awesome stuff!

[Regenweald]

Very cool news, I look forward to Simbian 4.0, also Android, cool though it may be, is only open in lip service. All the apps that give it its power remain Google closed IP. As the Google lawyers reminded a developer quite recently. Free to use is not the same as FOSS.

[justsomedude]

So the firmware for the machine they use on the Howard Stern Show is now open Source?

[Xbehave]

I guess that's the only way they'll make better money than Google's Android. Or at least get on their level. Who knows?

EDIT: Oh yeah, iPhone too.
On the global market, symbian is by far the biggest mobile OS (and the biggest smartphone OS too). The way i see it nokia(the biggest phone company)'s plan is to move thier smartphones to meamo, but keep their dumb phones on symbian.

It's been licensed EPL, which from my understanding is pretty similar to GPL but with a different patent clause (making it incompatible)


symbian uses a microkernel
symbian has fast enough realtime to do phone OS and deal with the phone networks on the same chip
symbian is great for battery life (Nokias have a reputation for having long battery life)
meamo is the way forward for smartphones because developers know linux better than they do meamo, hell with qt+python writing programs for it should be easy, but for dumbphones why move from something that works.
Dumbphones aren't about to disappear, some people choose not to pay for smartphones others can't afford to even if they do (the market for phones in developing countries is growing)

[chris200x9]

This is awesome news. :guitar:

[HappinessNow]

The source code for the ten-year old Symbian platform will be completely open source and available for free starting Thursday. The transition from proprietary code to open source is the largest in software history, claims the Symbian Foundation.

“The dominant operating system provider out there is Symbian,” says Lee Williams, executive director of the Symbian Foundation, “and now we are offering developers the ability to do so much more.”

Symbian, which powers most of Nokia’s phones, has been shipped in more than 330 million devices worldwide. But in the last few years, Symbian has seen more than its fair share of changes. In 2008, Nokia, one of Symbian’s largest customers, acquired a major share in the company. Nokia then created the Symbian Foundation to distribute the platform as an open source project, and began the process of opening up the source code that year.

Meanwhile, the operating system has seen new rivals crop up. Google’s Android, which is based on a Linux kernel, has become a favorite among handset makers such as Motorola and HTC. And it’s based on an open source foundation too.

Symbian’s move to open source has been completed four months ahead of schedule and it offers mobile developers new ways to innovate, says Williams. Any individual or organization can now take, use and modify the Symbian code for any device, from mobile phone to a tablet.

Similar as it may sound to Android’s promise, there are major differences, says Williams.

“About a third of the Android code base is open and nothing more,” says Williams. “And what is open is a collection of middleware. Everything else is closed or proprietary.”

Symbian is also ahead of Android in that it will publish its platform roadmap and planned features up to 2011, he says. And anyone can influence that roadmap or contribute to new features.

“Open source is also about open governance,” says Williams. “It’s about letting someone other than one control point guide the feature set and the asset base.”

But will that be enough for Symbian to steal away customers lured by a snazzier and younger rival?



Read More http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/02/symbian-operating-system-now-open-source-and-free/#ixzz0eXavMT76
Awesome! news, it is the only way they can continue to compete with Android.

It would be nice to see it advance into a full desktop-like Operating System.

[amitabhishek]

Wow this is such a great news!!! It would be interesting see a Symbian device from HTC :). The developers gonna mod this platform beyond recognition.

[benmoran]

This is great. My next phone is most likely going to be an Android device. I'm waiting for the new batch of them to come out over here in Japan. That said, the amount of proprietary code that ships on them is kinda disapointing. I'm anxious to see how these two OSes develop. Open FTW!

[3rdalbum]

I've got Symbian on my E63 and it's really disappointing. The UI is horribly complicated and ugly, and my least favourite 'feature' is when you start a call from the Log or from Contacts, and after you finish the call it continues to leave the Log or Contacts program open in the background.

It also has trouble connecting to wifi/3G at times, and there's not enough abstracting away from the actual phone hardware for programs - so some programs that run on other Symbian phones will not work properly on yours, or won't take advantage of different input hardware such as a full QWERTY keyboard.

My phone does have pretty good battery life, it doesn't crash and the price is excellent for the features; but the latter and possibly the former aren't really due to Symbian.

[Ozor Mox]

I've got Symbian on my E63 and it's really disappointing. The UI is horribly complicated and ugly, and my least favourite 'feature' is when you start a call from the Log or from Contacts, and after you finish the call it continues to leave the Log or Contacts program open in the background.

Hah, I definitely agree with you about the Log and Contacts applications staying open in the background, though to be fair they probably aren't heavy applications that will slow down the OS.

My current phone is an N85, which I just bricked the other day when it threw a wobbly during a software update. I think I'd avoid Symbian S60 3rd edition on my next phone as I've had all kinds of problems from it forgetting the date and time, not alerting me of messages and missed calls, corrupting music and photos off my memory card... I've played with S60 5th edition on a friend's phone and it seems a lot better.

On the subject of Symbian going open source, obviously there are no handsets out with the OSS edition on them yet, but is there any technical reason why the new edition can't be loaded on to a device running an older, non-OSS edition? Surely it's all just phone hardware...

[Martiini]

Symbian is a crap OS. I own 2 symbian phones ... and I can see Symbian die out in near future.

Just stick to linux phones, people!