Nokia transitions Symbian source to non-open license (ars technica) [LWN.net]

Nokia transitions Symbian source to non-open license (ars technica)

Posted Apr 12, 2011 6:21 UTC (Tue) by robla (subscriber, #424)
In reply to: Nokia transitions Symbian source to non-open license (ars technica) by klbrun
Parent article: Nokia transitions Symbian source to non-open license (ars technica)

Doubtful. Microsoft was probably most afraid of Nokia jumping on the Android bandwagon, and Nokia was one of the few remaining major handset makers that hadn't already done it. Microsoft seized what was likely the last opportunity to get a major handset manufacturer to adopt Windows Mobile before Android locked up the non-Apple market.

Closing up Symbian is icing on the cake for Microsoft, but hardly a strategic target anymore. The simplest explanation for Nokia's move is that the new management asked the question "what Nokia interest is served by giving all of this IP away for free?" It's not like there's an easy answer to that question, and whatever good answer there is won't be readily accepted by the new management.

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Nokia transitions Symbian source to non-open license (ars technica)

Posted Apr 12, 2011 6:32 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

I don't think that Microsoft cares about Symbian. It's a effectively dead OS and is not competitive with anything Microsoft makes.

Also almost all Android handset makers are also Windows handset makers. Companies like HTC hedge their bets by making phones that use both OSes. Nokia was the only company stupid enough to go exclusively with Windows Phone.

There are no answer to this question. At all.

Posted Apr 12, 2011 7:41 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

The simplest explanation for Nokia's move is that the new management asked the question "what Nokia interest is served by giving all of this IP away for free?" It's not like there's an easy answer to that question, and whatever good answer there is won't be readily accepted by the new management.

There are no answer as explained here. Long-term open-sourcing reduces your costs because you employ work of others, but this takes literally years (this graph is great illustration). Symbian does not have years. One year, may be two. In this circumstances it makes absolutely no sense to continue it as open-source project.

There are no answer to this question. At all.

Posted Apr 12, 2011 11:23 UTC (Tue) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]

If one only thinks about it in terms of costs and the business-centric arguments of open source, then the management is likely to wonder why they aren't able to fire all their staff and have volunteers develop the code for nothing ("By the next financial quarter!"). And many organisations just don't understand the openness aspects of open source (which more closely match the Free Software ideology), at best wondering why anyone would value openness (hint: it's about trust and sustainability), and at worst accusing anyone advocating openness of "wanting to give our technology away to our competitors" (followed by cries of "Nobody wants to write software for our platform!" when they close it all up).

As to why Symbian wasn't attractive as an open source project, perhaps details like the licence and project governance, plus purely practical matters around actually being able to compile the code and deploy it on something, might have had something to do with it. Throwing stuff over the wall doesn't build a community, nor does choosing a licence that isn't compatible with various other widespread licences, even though they didn't do a Sun or Microsoft and write yet another one.

Just to be sure ?

Posted Apr 12, 2011 11:35 UTC (Tue) by maurizio.dececco (guest, #6585) [Link]

Why leave something around that can be used years later by competitors ?
Symbian failed as a UI, but there are very good piece of technology that could be potentially be used by somebody later to compete with WP7.

Why take the risk ?

Just to be sure ?

Posted Apr 12, 2011 13:36 UTC (Tue) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]

Why leave something around that can be used years later by competitors ?

They already have, unless everyone who downloaded it has deleted their copy.

Just to be sure ?

Posted Apr 12, 2011 14:02 UTC (Tue) by maurizio.dececco (guest, #6585) [Link]

Of course. But once they decided to drop Symbian in the long term, and to keep it around for the transition, why give even more opportunities and make even more improvements ?

Just to be sure ?

Posted Apr 12, 2011 14:14 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

I don't think Microsoft cares. Any effort put into Symbian is time and money that is would otherwise be spent on actually making competitive products (ie: improving Android).

Nokia transitions Symbian source to non-open license (ars technica)

Posted Apr 22, 2011 15:51 UTC (Fri) by Imroy (guest, #62286) [Link]

I'm sure MS are very afraid of Android eating up the non-Apple smartphone market. But remember how this happened - the Nokia board chose an ex-MS executive to be their CEO and he did what everyone was expecting of him. Effectively, Nokia chose MS, not the other way around.

As to exactly why the Nokia board chose the ex-Microsoftie is not clear yet. Perhaps their rapidly dwindling market share scared them into thinking they needed to make a drastic change.