Open Sauce Software
Tasty titbits from people using Linux and other open source software in business.
Tuesday 24 June 2008, 11:23 AM
What will an open source Symbian do?
The announcement of that Symbian is going open source was a shock but in a matter of hours it seems inevitable - and very positive.
Despite its dominant market share in smartphones, Symbian has been looking increasingly under threat, from the enterprise-savvy of Windows Mobile, from the uber-usability of the iPhone, and (a little bit over the horizon), the promise of a free operating system from Google Android (as well as other Linux versions which already exist).
Symbian has been driving down its price, in the hope of getting its OS out onto more and cheaper phone - with a goal of displacing the purpose built OS on feature phones, but the last quarter's figures showed this wasn't happening fast enough, with the rivals around.
Nokia had most to lose, with its heavy reliance on the S60 user interface, and has taken a bold step - buy the whole of Symbian and then give it away.
When Android finally arrives (and it's facing delays), it will come up against an open source oeprating system which already has vast experience masses of applications and lots of users on multiple handsets.
Like I say, it's utterly logical, but a very big and (at first) surprising step.
update: And, the press conference just pointed out, this is the biggest single release of proprietary code into an open source model.
Despite its dominant market share in smartphones, Symbian has been looking increasingly under threat, from the enterprise-savvy of Windows Mobile, from the uber-usability of the iPhone, and (a little bit over the horizon), the promise of a free operating system from Google Android (as well as other Linux versions which already exist).
Symbian has been driving down its price, in the hope of getting its OS out onto more and cheaper phone - with a goal of displacing the purpose built OS on feature phones, but the last quarter's figures showed this wasn't happening fast enough, with the rivals around.
Nokia had most to lose, with its heavy reliance on the S60 user interface, and has taken a bold step - buy the whole of Symbian and then give it away.
When Android finally arrives (and it's facing delays), it will come up against an open source oeprating system which already has vast experience masses of applications and lots of users on multiple handsets.
Like I say, it's utterly logical, but a very big and (at first) surprising step.
update: And, the press conference just pointed out, this is the biggest single release of proprietary code into an open source model.
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