LWN: Comments on "Symbian source released"

Too little too late

cmccabe — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 23:27:26 +0000

Nah, by now they're working on a ZunePad.

Symbian source released

ikm — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 11:36:51 +0000

There's clearly a business model behind Symbian PKI (you pay $20 for the privilege to release a version of your software package). Opening up source doesn't mean revealing any private RSA keys etc. I doubt anything would change here.

> Until the requirement to have Symbian sign code I put on my own device is eliminated, I won't be developing any Symbian applications.

But you can crack your own phone and have this went away. A hassle, but not a major one. The main PITA is that you still have to pay to release to a wider world (unless a self-signed cert with a limited amount of capabilities is enough).

Symbian source released

imcdnzl — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 11:26:27 +0000

I dodged the point about symbian signed only because I know nothing much
about it. I do know we are trying to make it easier for people, and that many
people have worked out how to sign apps for their own phone (try your
favourite search engine).

I will try to do more research on this.

Too little too late

Cato — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 09:18:35 +0000

I don't buy the 'lack of any decent GSM operator' line - AT&T and T-Mobile combined have a big share of the market, so why didn't Nokia work with them?

Doing a CDMA version of Nokia phones might have worthwhile as well, although expensive (not just patent licenses but engineering costs) - the volume in the US market should have been enough.

Symbian source released

quotemstr — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 08:43:31 +0000

You completely dodged the point about Symbian Signed though. That requirement is the reason I moved on to less restrictive pastures. Until the requirement to have Symbian sign code I put on my own device is eliminated, I won't be developing any Symbian applications.

Symbian source released

imcdnzl — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 08:17:16 +0000

The code is here - http://developer.symbian.org/oss/

People can report problems with out website here -
http://developer.symbian.org/webbugs/ (login required as Bugzilla). That is
definitely a bug - the other URL and I will raise a request to have a fix for
it.

Ian McDonald, Head of IT, Symbian

Symbian source released

pabs — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 04:32:53 +0000

PS: Why couldn't they have chosen git instead of mercurial :(

Symbian source released

pabs — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 04:30:04 +0000

Looks like they missed some bits:

http://laforge.gnumonks.org/weblog/2010/02/05#20100205-sy...

Sounds like the whole Symbian Signed thing will be staying? That has been a pain for me. It is nice that they are reducing the costs a bit though.

As an S60 app developer, I'm not sure if Symbian being open source is a good thing or not. I suppose it means Linux drivers could theoretically be written for all the hardware Symbian runs on, which would be good. At least they plan on switching to Qt, which is probably (hopefully) a much better set of APIs than the eye-bleeding horror that is S60. I read somewhere that Qt folks have worked on porting to WinCE/Windows Mobile so maybe I won't have to deal with the other eye-bleeding horror in my life (Win32) either.

It'll be interesting to find out what Nokia's plans are for future handsets; will they be Maemo or Symbian? or a mix of both?

Symbian source released

lkundrak — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 10:32:56 +0000

$ U=http://developer.symbian.org/main/source/; P=1; while wget -qO - $U'/packages/index.php?sort=2&td=&page='$P'&numperpage=20' |sed -n 's|.*\(/packages/package/index.php?pk=[0-9]*\).*|'$U'\1|p'; do P=$(( $P + 1 )); done |while read i; do wget -qO - "$i" |sed -n 's|.*href="\(/oss/[^"]*\).*|http://developer.symbian.org/\1/archive/tip.tar.bz2|p'; done

Hope this helps.

Too little too late

buchanmilne — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 09:07:00 +0000

It's just that it was never popular in the USA for some reason.

The historical reason was the lack of any decent GSM operator. Nokia is obviously reluctant to pay Qualcomm licensing fees for patents (on CDMA) that compete with their GSM patents.

In other countries, which have had decent third-generation cell networks for years (e.g., South Africa has had good 3G coverage since 2005, and entry-level 3G-capable phones such as the Nokia N70 have been commonplace on entry-level contracts since 2006, and currently the HSDPA-capable Nokia E-71 probably has more market share on it's own than iPhone 3G), Nokia has a very large market share, in both enyry-level and business smart phones.

Now that the iPhone has driven GSM adoption in the US, Nokia actually has a better chance to compete in the US. If Apple had decided to go CDMA/EV-DO instead, Nokia would have been in a much more difficult position ...

Too little too late

epa — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 08:41:03 +0000

So you're saying Microsoft are working on a Zune-phone?

Too little too late

kragil — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 08:15:24 +0000

The Nexus One is produced by HTC and has hands down better hardware than the
Iphone 3gs (Bigger AMOLED screen, faster SOC, double mic, 5mp camera +
light, replacable battery, SD card slot)

The software side is just different. Not always as smooth, but has more
features (Voice input, Turn by turn navi etc)

Too little too late - NOT

brouhaha — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 08:04:06 +0000

The problem wasn't that it took two years to do the work of open-sourcing it, but that they didn't start that process five years sooner. However, from what people have said Symbian has a lot more market share outside the US, so maybe they didn't miss the boat as badly as I thought.

Still, if I were a looking for a phone with good support for open source, Symbian wouldn't be at the top of my list.

Too little too late

rahvin — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 00:58:31 +0000

Don't count MS out. Sure the current offerings are highly dated but I'd expect that WinMo 7 is going to be very competitive. The success of the Iphone and Android hype has moved them to action. They are keeping the WinMo 7 development very secret, that means something new they don't want to tip their competitors to. Even today WinMo still holds a significant portion of the market. The current leaders not in any order are WinMo, Iphone and BlackBerry with varying market shares. BB will continue to be a big segment of the market regardless of what Apple or MS do.

Personally I think MS will take back some market share, their platform is still more open to outside applications than Apple and if they get the interface right and a proper on phone marketplace (rather than relying on placing like Handango) they could regain market share. Androids nice, but frankly I think that Verizon and ATT will mess up the phones by locking them down (broken bluetooth, no outside apps, no updates, etc) and they won't end up being successful. The Iphone's success was that Apple took control of the platform from the phone companies and hardware companies, give that control back while relying on someone like HTC or Nokia to innovate and they will screw things up, guaranteed. Even today HTC still fails to produce a phone that is even equivalent to an Iphone 3GS hardware wise, let alone innovate.

I personally wouldn't be surprised at this point to see WinMo 7 have Microsoft build and supply the phones themselves, basically create an entire platform like Apple has done, but allow any application not just approved ones. Basically my point is, don't count MS out, they have a LOT of money they can waste building us all high end smartphones at a huge subsidy simply to market Windows, Offic, Exchange and the XBox.

Too little too late

drag — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 22:29:42 +0000

Yeah.

As of last year Symbian had more market share in the smart phone market
world-wide then Windows 7, Linux phones, and pretty much everything else...
combined. It's just that it was never popular in the USA for some reason.

Certainly the open sourcing of Symbian means that in terms of Smartphone
OSes the OSS model is absolutely dominate.

Symbian source released

ikm — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 22:11:09 +0000

Anyone found out how to download it as one large tarball? All I see is a myriad of separate mercurial repositories. This isn't very grep-friendly.

Too little too late

Adi — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 21:47:37 +0000

Whoa, Symbian still have very large (if not the largest) part of market.
Additionally, availability of Qt4 for Symbian and its promotion by Nokia
will definitely draw some developers towards this platform.
I think Symbian will stay with us for a very long time.
If I have to guess, I think Windows will be eradicated from smartphones much
faster.

Too little too late - NOT

klbrun — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 20:27:41 +0000

Actually, Nokia has had a good quarter in smart phones, thanks in part to Symbian sales. But Nokia does not sell much in the US market, which is dominated by iPhone and Android (with Android gaining on iPhone).

Making Symbian open is not trivial, and Nokia said it would take at least two years to complete. The biggest drawback to Symbian is that the code base is old and complex.

Symbian source released

csamuel — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 20:08:59 +0000

I think the main thing you need to look at is how much of the OS has been
open sourced, certainly both Android and Maemo still have proprietary
parts (and both have open source groups trying to fill the gaps).

With Android on my OpenMoko Neo Freerunner, for instance, I cannot access
the Android Market, use the Maps application or sync it with Google
Calendar as those parts have not been open sourced. Lack of access to the
Market is the main killer as you have to rely on the developers making the
apk package files available separately.

Too little too late

brouhaha — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 19:09:32 +0000

Having more open source choice is a good thing, but I think they missed the boat on this one by not doing it much sooner. I don't think they'll get any significant gain in traction versus Android.

Symbian source released

yokem_55 — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:54:18 +0000

What would be nice if the hardware was sufficiently standardized and/or documented that one could pick a handset, and then decide what OS to run. One can dream right?

Symbian source released

pranith — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 15:37:35 +0000

Android, pal, maemo, Limo and now symbian. What does one need to look at before picking up a Mobile OS?