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Symbian to be another open mobile platform

Symbian to be another open mobile platform

Posted Jun 25, 2008 22:53 UTC (Wed) by aleXXX (subscriber, #2742)
Parent article: Symbian to be another open mobile platform

Would it be actually a "problem" if freeing Symbian slows down Linux 
adoption on mobile phones ?
I mean, by then it would actually mean that one free OS (Symbian) would 
be preferred over another free OS (Linux). I.e. both are free, and I 
think my goal is to have more free software available, not specifically 
having more marketshare for one specific free software (except the ones 
I'm working on myself).

Alex



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Symbian to be another open mobile platform

Posted Jun 26, 2008 5:02 UTC (Thu) by kripkenstein (guest, #43281) [Link] (8 responses)

Well, Linux is free now while Symbian will be freed 'over the next 2 years' - which might
happen, or it might not.

Symbian to be another open mobile platform

Posted Jun 26, 2008 9:49 UTC (Thu) by liljencrantz (guest, #28458) [Link] (7 responses)

True. But I don't know of a single gradual open source rollout by a larger company that didn't
happen according to plan (OpenOffice, Java, Netscape), so I'm willing to give Nokia the
benefit of doubt. 

Symbian to be another open mobile platform

Posted Jun 26, 2008 9:56 UTC (Thu) by kripkenstein (guest, #43281) [Link] (6 responses)

Well, Java is the example I was thinking about. Look how much time it's taking (still isn't
done!), far more than expected.

Symbian to be another open mobile platform

Posted Jun 26, 2008 10:02 UTC (Thu) by tajyrink (subscriber, #2750) [Link]

Agreed. My general rule of the thumb is "it's ready when it's in Debian main, fully
functional". In this case of course that'd mean Debian GNU/Symbian, at least on ARM port of it
:)

Slow Java open-sourcing

Posted Jun 26, 2008 10:49 UTC (Thu) by alex (subscriber, #1355) [Link] (1 responses)

To be fair to Sun it's not like the control all the code from day zero. Proprietary code bases
tend to have all sorts of stuff in it and that takes a while to sort out.

Slow Java open-sourcing

Posted Jun 26, 2008 13:10 UTC (Thu) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link]

Which is exactly why we should be skeptical of promises to open the 
code -- the companies don't necessarily have the power to make the promise 
reality.

Symbian to be another open mobile platform

Posted Jun 26, 2008 11:16 UTC (Thu) by liljencrantz (guest, #28458) [Link] (1 responses)

I was under the impression that Sun said from the get go that some pieces might have to be
reimplemented since they didn't own the rights to them and weren't sure they could obtain
them.

Do you have a reference to Sun claiming this would happen faster than it already has? In my
world, the creation of IcedTea is evidence of how well the community can help out and pick up
the slack during a major code roll out like this.

Java, Sun, IcedTea

Posted Jun 26, 2008 12:35 UTC (Thu) by mjw (subscriber, #16740) [Link]

In my world, the creation of IcedTea is evidence of how well the community can help out and pick up the slack during a major code roll out like this.

Also you could see it as the example that the java liberation is basically done now (Indeed through the help of the free software community at large): Java is finally Free and Open

Symbian to be another open mobile platform

Posted Jun 27, 2008 2:53 UTC (Fri) by robilad (guest, #27163) [Link]

It took Sun about a year to publish all of the JDK code they could under the GPL (~96 %), and
another year together with the OpenJDK community to finish off the remaining bits needed to
certify an implementation as Java6 compatibile.

The only comparison that remotely makes sense that I know of is the tri-licensing of the
Mozilla code base, which took 5 years until completion, afaik.

Two years from 0 to 100% is quite the opposite of slow for a radical licensing change on
codebase as mature and large as Java.


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