LONDON — Since Nokia announced earlier this year its decision to acquire the rest of Symbian and offer its S60 and Symbian operating system for free to the open source community, the method of Nokia's transition has remained largely unclear.
Nokia addressed some issues--but not all--at a briefing held here for a small group of journalists prior to the Smartphone Show scheduled to open Tuesday (Oct. 21).
"To take the business of handsets and software development to the next level," the open source community is critical, said David Rivas, Nokia's vice president, S60 product and technology management.
But taking a valuable business like the Symbian OS to the open-source, free-for-all, community is hardly a risk-free process, Rivas acknowledged.
The Symbian Foundation, a not-for-profit organization set up to manage all the assets related to Symbian, will take a phased-in approach. First, it will make available the source code of S60 and Symbian OS "for free" to all members of the Foundation in the first half of 2009.
During that time, Foundation members--who are asked to pay $1,500 membership fee to join--can use the Foundation's intellectual property assets, but will not be allowed to redistribute them.
By the first half of 2010, the Symbian Foundation will be ready to go open source, he added.
As for launching its assets into the open source community, Rivas stressed, "This is not a social experiment."
He said, "The development priorities will be driven by the Foundation members, and they are driven by business decisions of everyone involved."
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