symbian foundation killing websites, what does it mean?
 

doesnt seem like it will be around much longer? maybe nokia will launch symbian^4 and slow development on it? keep it around for 5+ years like s60?

http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/27/s...-source-repos/

Re: symbian foundation killing websirtes, what does it mean?
 

Nokia already said there wont be a symbian^4. Instead of big uodates requiring new hardware they're going to incrementally improve symbian^3 through smaller updates, bringing ^4 features to existing users.

Re: symbian foundation killing websirtes, what does it mean?
 

What a roller coaster. I knew Symbian Foundation was in trouble, but to close down all the repositories is drastic action.

I hope maemo.org does not rely on Nokia to keep Maemo repositories open forever.

Re: symbian foundation killing websirtes, what does it mean?
 

We do, at least for the non-free/non-redistributable bits, but Nokia has confirmed they will stay up for the foreseeable future and we will be given plenty of notice if/when that changes.

Re: symbian foundation killing websirtes, what does it mean?
 

Yes, but once upon a time Nokia also confirmed that Symbian would remain open source. Now they won't even provide minimal funding to keep the servers up.

Re: symbian foundation killing websirtes, what does it mean?
 

Last meeting of Symbian Coucil has info on Nokia's plans for Symbian and it's avaleability. http://developer.symbian.org/wiki/20...s_wrap-up_call Seems that Nokia is looking for roughly similar development & 'openess' model as what Google does with Android. Develop it in house and then dump the code somewhere.


Petra summarised Nokia's future plans re the Symbian platform:

The Symbian platform remains business critical to Nokia and their estimate of selling >50m S^3-based devices still holds

Nokia plan to develop the Symbian platform further

Nokia are looking at an alternate open and direct model for making the platform available to the community in future. The aim is that the model "will be no less open, free and flexible" than today's

Nokia do not intend to include a council-style governance system in their new model

No decision made as yet regarding whether EPL will be retained or an alternate license adopted. Petra indicated that terms will not be more restrictive than EPL.

Nokia intend to transition signing services (Symbian Signed) in some manner as they will still require it, details TBD

Nokia will communicate more detail regarding the new Symbian project by end Q1 2011 at the latest, via the standard Nokia corporate communication channels (press release, Nokia Conversations blog etc - details TBD)

Re: symbian foundation killing websirtes, what does it mean?
 

The Symbian foundation is switching to a licensing body. With Samsung and Sony Ericsson pulling out, there was no need for the foundation anymore. It makes no sense to duplicate the work being done at forum.nokia.com anymore. Samsung is also closing their Symbian forum completely. Hyper-X is now the go-to guy for Samsung custom rom upgrades.

Re: symbian foundation killing websirtes, what does it mean?
 

I didn't know that open source software has a requirement for dedicated web server hosting stuff.

and as you can read from engadget, it still is open source because the sources are available.

Re: symbian foundation killing websirtes, what does it mean?
 

There are many different types of OS licenses. I would assume it has been determined that the applicable license(s) does not require online availability or that the legal risk is negligible. But it's a minimal cost and no doubt some Symbian developers are regretting that they were swayed by the professed "commitment" to open source Symbian.

That's not the point any way. And Symbian will not "remain" open source, as future developments will be under some other license. Most people here, including me, don't regard periodically throwing code over the wall as open.

I don't want to dissect Symbian dissolution here. I just want to point out the learning moment for maemo.org and other OSS based communities.

Re: symbian foundation killing websirtes, what does it mean?
 

The Maemo bits that are open will continue being available somewhere, the only question is how long Nokia will be willing to host the closed bits.

The Symbian Foundation ran out of money and is winding down hosting, that's one thing. I expect Nokia will re-host those bits somewhere under nokia.com eventually, but to be honest who cares? Symbian was a classic case of "what if you opened the source and nobody came", a real community never formed around it and even the other founding members ended up abandoning ship. For better or worse there just isn't enough mindshare or interest out there for anything that's not POSIX or WIN32.

Re: symbian foundation killing websirtes, what does it mean?
 

And I bet that whatever's up now on Symbian.com will be hosted by independents as well.

Re: symbian foundation killing websirtes, what does it mean?
 

Yes, there was never a good community there.

Re: symbian foundation killing websirtes, what does it mean?
 

So it seems, but there are other factors. What if Windows was opened, would that be a hit? Certainly not, it is just way too complex and bloated and requires a strict chain of command and large coherent teams to operate. I remember Watcom C/C++. It was opened and just withered away even though it arguably was the best compiler at the time.

Symbian could have worked as open source if they started 10 years earlier and branched out a separate open source real-time kernel in addition to a separate application kernel. The mixed approach of the EKA2 never really worked in real life. The "real" OS in all phones is the real-time OS, and a open source upstream kernel similar to the Linux kernel could possibly work, maybe.

Symbian is still the best OS for mobile devices by far, but increasing HW specs shrinks the practical real benefit in relative terms. It is all in the hands of Nokia now, and I hope they stick to it.

Re: symbian foundation killing websirtes, what does it mean?
 

Given that Symbian was only fully open sourced earlier this year, was there sufficient time for an "independent" (ie not existing Symbian phone manufacturers) community to have formed?

Re: symbian foundation killing websirtes, what does it mean?
 

That's a good point.