Symbian OS Now Fully Open Source - Polidicks

[quote]The Symbian Foundation will move forward on Thursday with offering up the full Symbian smartphone platform to open source. The Symbian 3 platform, including applications, middleware, and the kernel itself, will be offered under terms of the Eclipse Public License and other open source licenses. "You can download it, you can modify it," said Larry Berkin, head of global alliances for the foundation. Previously, the kernel was made available via open source. "We're open-sourcing 108 packages that will be available at the source code level," Berkin said. Handset manufacturers can modify the code and build differentiated handsets, he said. Originally due to be fully open-sourced by June, foundation members accelerated the process, said Berkin. Code, more than 40 million lines of it, will be available at this Web page at 6am Pacific time. "End users will see, ideally, differentiated devices, converged devices that are based on Symbian that range from smartphones [to converged devices]," such as cameras or a phone that is a gaming device, he said. Open-sourcing possibly could result in incompatible, forked versions of the platform, Berkin said. Manufacturers will need to be responsible for their work with Symbian. The market can be self-correcting in situations such as this, he said. There are 330 million Symbian-based devices in use, according to Berkin. Five manufacturers currently build Symbian devices: Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Fujitsu, and Sharp. Symbian technology had been driven by Symbian Limited, the majority of which was owned by Nokia, which then spun it out as an open source project. Putting Symbian into open source will boost the platform in the marketplace, said analyst William Stofega, program manager for mobile device technology and trends at IDC. "I think it's good for Nokia and it's also good for Symbian in terms of its viability over all in terms of market share and being able to compete with the likes of Apple and Android and the others," he said. Also available for download are development kits for building Symbian applications and mobile devices. These include the Symbian Developer Kit and the Product Development Kit. In November 2009, Nokia put the Linux-based Maemo OS on its high-end N900 "mobile computer," which features a phone and capabilities like email, Web browser and video. But the company remains a backer of Symbian, Nokia representatives said.[/quote] Source: [url]http://www.pcworld.com/article/188521/symbian_os_now_fully_open_source.html[/url] Someone might like this in this section, who knows.

Good, my phone uses Symbian so this means more stuff for the phone.

Fuck yeah! custom shit.

They must be trying to follow in Androids footsteps, and that is probably quite a good thing, hopefully we will see more mobile OS's becoming open source.

Awesome something that new µtorrent is good for!

Sweet, my phone runs Symbian 60 3rd edition. I wonder if this'll affect me at all. [QUOTE=Gprimeisback;20022879]Awesome something that new µtorrent is good for![/QUOTE] What

[QUOTE=KrAzY_nikomo;20023023]What[/QUOTE] I think he's poking fun at the typical excuse to have a torrent client, downloading Linux distros (or open source software in general)

Great news!

Sybian?

[QUOTE=B-hazard;20022857]hopefully we will see more mobile OS's becoming open source.[/QUOTE] apart from apple. :(

got an s60v3 phone, so hopefully this will make it a bit more hackable, or at least pave the way for some nice apps

Open-source software is boss.

Wow, I didn't wait this one. That's awesome. I thought that with the next phone, I will get some Android device, but now it seems that I might stay with Nokia

[QUOTE=DrTaxi;20023040]I think he's poking fun at the typical excuse to have a torrent client, downloading Linux distros (or open source software in general)[/QUOTE] Open-source software is more often distributed either through repositories, SVN or Git, or anything like that.

[QUOTE=Awesomecaek;20026574]Wow, I didn't wait this one. That's awesome. I thought that with the next phone, I will get some Android device, but now it seems that I might stay with Nokia[/QUOTE] As long as you don't purchase a Nokia tablet running Maemo you'll be fine. Unless you want to install Mer on it - that'd be "open source" version of Nokia's Maemo :P

[QUOTE=KrAzY_nikomo;20026590]Open-source software is more often distributed either through repositories, SVN or Git, or anything like that.[/QUOTE] Its a joke, don't take it so serious. :downs:

Cool, but thought that SymbianOS was pretty open... glad if I don't have to self-sign cool shit anymore though. Bad if viruses come.

Symbian CEO Lee Williams Tweets Steve Jobs and Bill Gates about Symbian going open source. [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmtiJb5GpYI[/media] lol

[QUOTE=Pretiacruento;20026645]As long as you don't purchase a Nokia tablet running Maemo you'll be fine. Unless you want to install Mer on it - that'd be "open source" version of Nokia's Maemo :P[/QUOTE] I already got N810. They totally pissed me with cutting N810 support when releasing N900, which is something completely different. :saddowns:

[QUOTE=Awesomecaek;20027571]I already got N810. They totally pissed me with cutting N810 support when releasing N900, which is something completely different. :saddowns:[/QUOTE] Won't the same OS install?

Awesome! It's just too bad they didn't use the GPL license.

[QUOTE=evilking1;20027593]Won't the same OS install?[/QUOTE] What happens is that all of the bugs found on the N810 tablet (running Maemo 4 OS, based on Debian), were fixed in the next version of that OS, Maemo 5, only available for the N900. With NO more Nokia updates after the N900 came out, and unable to install Maemo 5 on a N810 -the OS is not backwards compatible-, you're pretty much stuck with a 10 month old, $500 brick. If you take a look at the Maemo forums, everyone is raging by the fact that Nokia is about to do the same thing again. All the bugs found on the N900's Maemo 5 -so far, the phone came out just a few months ago-, will be fixed on Maemo 6, which will only be available for their next tablet, the [I]N910, which is rumored to come along by the end of this year[/I]. And because of that, if such phone comes out, you'd be stuck [U]again[/U] with another 500 bucks brick, just because Nokia won't support their older products after they release a new one. That is the [U][B]only[/B][/U] thing that's holding me back from purchasing an N900, other than that, the phone is absolutely BADASS. Let's hope they can port Symbian to the N900... :q:

Fuck, I was hoping this included Maemo 5...

[QUOTE=Alex_DeLarge;20030964]Fuck, I was hoping this included Maemo 5...[/QUOTE] We can only hope... :/ [editline]09:42PM[/editline] [QUOTE=Awesomecaek;20027571]I already got N810. They totally pissed me with cutting N810 support when releasing N900, which is something completely different. :saddowns:[/QUOTE] Do you still have Maemo 4 installed, or are you using Mer?

The hell is symbian?

One small step for open source

[QUOTE=Pretiacruento;20031221]We can only hope... :/ [editline]09:42PM[/editline] Do you still have Maemo 4 installed, or are you using Mer?[/QUOTE] Maemo 4 I guess. What's Mer?

[QUOTE=Awesomecaek;20039806]Maemo 4 I guess. What's Mer?[/QUOTE] [quote]Mer is a new Linux operating system, built upon a thin base of Ubuntu Jaunty combined with the best open-source elements of Nokia's Maemo platform.[/quote] Mer is an open-source OS that is used in [i]old[/i] Nokia tablets -such as the N810-, so they can catch up with newer Maemo versions (as of today, Maemo 5). Here's Mer in action, on a N810: [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iC_5LoSEZSE[/media] [url=http://wiki.maemo.org/Mer]Mer homepage[/url] <-- Looks pretty cool... I'd try it out if I were you ;)

I'd rather see more devices running Maemo than Symbian. Symbian's nice and all, but Maemo is built around established API's that have been on the desktop for ages, so porting applications isn't really that hard (same with Android to an extent, it has some custom stuff but the base stuff is plain Linux, Firefox is already running on it just a couple of months after they started playing with it)

[QUOTE=Pretiacruento;20039934]Mer is an open-source OS that is used in [i]old[/i] Nokia tablets -such as the N810-, so they can catch up with newer Maemo versions (as of today, Maemo 5). Here's Mer in action, on a N810: [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iC_5LoSEZSE[/media] [url=http://wiki.maemo.org/Mer]Mer homepage[/url] <-- Looks pretty cool... I'd try it out if I were you ;)[/QUOTE] Cool beans. I will certainly try this, thanks. I am pissed off by lot of stuff in the Maemo 4. I wonder if this would be better.