Symbian Goes Open Source

 

Trending on Twitter yesterday: @billgates @stevejobs Wanted to let you know that we have 4.5 Billion worth of free @symbian code available. Hugs and kisses. Lee That's  Symbian's CEO to Bill and Steve. 

 

The organisation’s dev page reads: “All Symbian^3 platform source code is now available as open source code, to members and non-members alike, mostly under the Eclipse public license (EPL) but in part under other fully open source licenses.” The Symbian Foundation includes old-line mobile makers and telcos — Nokia, Samsung, Huawei, Sony Ericsson, Sharp, and Fujitsu, NTT DoCoMo, Motorola, Texas Instruments, Vodafone, LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics, STMicroelectronics and AT&T among others.“We have always been committed to opening the Symbian platform completely by June 2010, but we are ahead of schedule and are now making the rest of the code available (33 million lines in total).”

With more than 300 million Symbian handsets sold around the world, you might get carried away by the announcement by Lee Williams that this is the largest open source migration effort ever. Their dev wiki says that if you chained all the Symbian phones made, it would span the circumference of the Earth. Bizarre boast really - you could say the same about a lot of things, including Lifebouy Soap. No, this is isn’t going to add much zing to your existing Symbian phones. You won’t be able to reprogram or hack your Nokia 1100, or S60 devices like the Nokia XpressMusic, N97, Nokia X6, Sony Ericsson Satio, or the Samsung i8910. You aren’t likely to get any serious software upgrades that will extend the feature set of your existing Symbian phones. That’s to the sole discretion of the manufacturers, who are far too busy pumping new products that make the current-line up of phones seem like yesterday’s news.

The Symbian foundation cites third-party IP as a reason: “We have focussed our efforts in removing code encumbered with third-party IP from the live code in Symbian^3 and beyond. For that reason, Only Symbian^3 and subsequent releases will be available as open source code. Essentially, this means Symbian playing catch up with Apple and Google Android. It's the world's most popular smartphone platform, and quite a significant development. Phones running on the Symbian^3 platform will start shipping in the second half of 2010.

As of now, Apple has already enjoyed a three year market lead over its competitors, and Android phones are now available in India for Rs 15,000 ($300). The Symbian platform was the first to introduce video calls on mobile using Fring late last year, the free app could ride on any available network, from 3G to Wi-Fi. This feature worked really well on Nokia phones, which have a front-facing camera. VoIP has always been a big reason to use a computing device that allows third party software, video calls over Wi-Fi just represents the end state of the glorious disruption that will have Telcos very worried.

As the Symbian foundation’s release states: "The day of truly free telephony is about to dawn". This move, seven months ahead of schedule also signals some kind of a backlash against Google and its other Android partners, who now have to compete with the Google’s Nexus One phone, developed behind a green screen. This seemingly disruptive development hasn’t done much to stem the tide of unpopularity against the Symbian platform.

In an ‘unendorsed’ view by Chris J. Karr on the Symbian foundation blog he says: “It should be pretty clear (at this point) that in the medium to long term, I think that Symbian will fail to compete as a smartphone platform.” He also suggests ways in which the Symbian platform could innovate: “A power-line controller running Symbian would be a gift from heaven. A small portable and programmable GPS transmitter (such as the “spider-tracers” found in comic books) could serve as the basis for tracking family vehicles and other belongings. Or how, about a coffee maker that sends me an instant message (or alerts my Symbian-equipped alarm clock) when the brew is finished?” That opinion chimes fairly well with Symbian's new steampunk themed indie website.