Symbian Open Source: Better Late Than Never
My first mobile device’s operating system was … Symbian. My father had discovered the Revo (a touch-screen PDA), and bought one for himself, my mother, my sister and myself. He has stayed with Symbian, choosing the barely-maybe-available-in-the-US-anymore Nokia Communicator (he bought his and my mother’s from Europe. Isn’t the Internet grand?).
So according to the BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/), Symbian has completed the move to open source.
“The Symbian Foundation’s announced that it would make its code open source in 2008 and has now completed the move.
It means that any organisation or individual can now use and modify the platform’s underlying source code “for any purpose”.
Methinks the Symbian Foundation is playing catch-up and wants to enlist the help of the tinkerers and hobbyists for help.
“But Mr Williams (of Symbian Foundation) denied the move to open source was a marketing move.”
Right… <Nudge nudge, wink wink>
And if you’re worried it’s an older version, Symbian Foundation’s blog (http://blog.symbian.org/) says “And it is Symbian^3, the latest version of the platform, which will be soon be feature complete.”
Mind you, the Revo had a great version of Mille Bournes…
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martim
GIS C++!>$ And if you can translate that, you've been around as long as CompuServe. IT is now just a hobby, and shares my time with cross-stitch and knitting. High-tech, low-tech, and everything in between. I keep these guys in line and roll my eyes at Simmons. Come on, ladies, celebrate your love of technology! "Tech should be black. Colors are for cases."
I think Symbian is actually the #1 platorm for phones in use worldwide so there must be a lot of phones that this is compatible with if someone can use it properly.
I had seen that said some years ago, but I wasn’t sure if that was still true. I think it’s much bigger in Europe than here, probably because of anti-MS sentiment. My parents Communicators are really nice, and the new generation are certainly smaller than the first generations they had. They aren’t color, but they’re just as ‘computer-like’ as our PPCs.
correct symbian is the number 1 smartphone platform in the world and now that the the “russians and chinese” get to do with the symbian code what they will i think were going to see an XDA type site for symbian (if one doesn’t already exist but probably not as english friendly due to the fact that not many americans use symbian) that is going to have us drooling over nokia phones… or at least going to XDA to get the newest symbian build on our windows phones 🙂