Nokia to Release Python for S60 Source Code [LWN.net]

Nokia has announced that the company will release the source code for its Python for S60 Platform software package. The source code for Python for S60 Platform will be posted by Nokia to SourceForge.net. Further information and a link to the project can be found here.

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Maybe it can give Java ME a bit of healty competition?

Posted Jan 31, 2006 18:55 UTC (Tue) by fredrik (subscriber, #232) [Link] (4 responses)

Considering the linux based Nokia 770, it is starting to look like Nokia has a real open source strategy. If that's the case, it is really good news for anyone who develop mobile solutions.

Currently the best "open" choice for client side mobile development is Java ME. Although there is a lot of progress in j2me, it still has a long way to go before being really powerfull. Hopefully it will be beneficial for Java ME to get a bit of outside competition from python.

A small catch with python for the S60 platform is that it is limited to Nokia devices, thus resulting in vendor lock-in effects. Although j2me isn't WORA, it is still quite platform independent and can to some extent be moved from mobile phones from sony ericssson, noika, siemens, and motorola without much changes.

Maybe it can give Java ME a bit of healty competition?

Posted Feb 1, 2006 2:32 UTC (Wed) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (3 responses)

How is this going to cause vendor lock-in?

Is the code that you write to for this python 360 going to have to differ significantly from normal python code? Is some critical python modules significantly different in syntax and behavior from what is supplied in the official python releases?

And seeing how you can take this code from this python doo-dad and port it to other devices, were with java me you can only use it on devices that the java me runs on already.. I just don't see the lock-in angle so much.

Now I don't know anything about the s60 stuff, but I am actually curious.

Maybe it can give Java ME a bit of healty competition?

Posted Feb 1, 2006 7:50 UTC (Wed) by massimiliano (subscriber, #3048) [Link]

I think he means that other (not Nokia) mobile phones do not support Python (yet).

Reason for vendor lock-in observation

Posted Feb 1, 2006 8:16 UTC (Wed) by fredrik (subscriber, #232) [Link] (1 responses)

Well, there is (AFAIK) only one vendor who provides devices with the S60 platform. So, as soon as you develop for that platform you can only use your software on Nokia devices. Even if you use python, which is platform agnostic in general, when using the S60 platform specific api:s, you get a lock-in effect.

One could of course argue that the java-path is a similar form of platform lock-in. Obviously Java ME source code wont work on non-java devices. The difference is that you can buy devices from most providers (sony ericsson, nokia, siemens, lg, motorola) and get a reasonable level of hardware platform independence.

Now, I must confess that I have not tried to develop with the python api on the S60 platform - though I hope to have time to do so soon - so I can't say for sure what level of nokia-specific code will be involved. And Java ME really isn't the holy grale, work arounds for specific phones are common. I guess it's somewhat a matter of semantics...

Reason for vendor lock-in observation

Posted Feb 1, 2006 11:12 UTC (Wed) by nedrichards (subscriber, #23295) [Link]

Plenty of comanies have licened Series 60 and actually made phones that run on it. check out http://www.s60.com/ it is however a smartphone OS and thus currently limited to about 10% of the market at best wheras j2me can obviously address a larger base. However for things like rapid prototyping Python can't be beat. Sort of the same niche it has on the desktop GUI actually.