Symbian Foundation continues open source trend (Just Windows Mobile to go!) June 24, 2008
Posted by wirelessinformatics in Handsets, News.trackback
Two weeks ago at Handsets World Berlin, I listened to Symbian’s research chief, David Wood, describe the challenges of open source. “People have been predicting the success of open source for years but fragementation is still too easy and integration is hard,” he stated.
On his blog, David clarifies his ‘open source leads to fragementation’ thinking. “At this point you may raise the question: isn’t open source meant to be somewhat magical in that you can all just look at it and fix it anyway; you don’t need to get the original person to come and fix it? But here we reach the crux of the matter. The problem is there is just too much code, there are such vast systems, it is not just a few hundred lines, or even a few thousand lines of code, there are hundreds of thousands or even millions of lines of code in these components and they are all interfacing together. So somebody looks at the code and they think, “Oh gosh, it is very complicated”, and they look and they look and they look and eventually they think, “Well if I change this line of code, it will probably work”, but then without realising it they have broken something else. And the project takes ages and ages to progress…
Well, at least David will be fully prepared and cognisant of the open source challenge following today’s announcement that Nokia (and friends) will unite Symbian OS, S60, UIQ and MOAP to create a single open source software platform and establish the Symbian Foundation.
I suspect Motorola will be more than happy to stop pouring money into UIQ following its 50% shared investment deal last year.
To enable the Foundation, Nokia plans to acquire the remaining shares of Symbian Limited that it does not already own and then contribute the Symbian and S60 software to the Foundation. Sony Ericsson and Motorola today announced their intention to contribute technology from UIQ and DOCOMO has also indicated its willingness to contribute its MOAP(S) assets. From these contributions, the Foundation will provide a unified platform with common UI framework. A full platform will be available for all Foundation members under a royalty-free license, from the Foundation’s first day of operations.
The announcement is a direct response to the Open Handset Alliance and leaves Windows Mobile on the periphery as the only OS not led by a consortium or offered under open source licensing models. With the commoditisation of the OS market now in full progress, it can’t be long before Microsoft responds – especially after it became clear that its strongest OEM partner, HTC, was also getting cosy with the OHA and Android.
Nokia’s purchase of the remaining Symbian shares is still subject to regulatory approval. It’s offer (approx $410 US) certainly makes commercial sense considering the company paid $250m in Symbian licensing fees last year.
Finally. If, in a world of open source, you are wondering about revenue models, WIF Magazine contributor Andreas Constantinou at VisionMobile offers a useful overview.
To simply announce that the code is “open source” is meaningless. To Open Source means much more than publishing the source code. The code must be comprehendible, and there must be a reasonable process to allow the community to contribute. This is hard, and often established code bases and working practices are not amenable to the transition.
David Wood seems to lack a little confidence in the quality of his codebase. Of course it is possible to break things if there is not a continuous build process, appropriate unit and regression tests, and a culture of peer review. Many closed source project fail to go open source simply because of these quality issues. Remember Netscape? It took a complete rewrite in order to produce a viable open source product (Firefox).
Given David’s comments, I would suspect that the best way forward is to dump the existing code (some of which is probably over 5 years old), and start from scratch with the level of programming discipline that open source demands….
Another driver for this is the security implications. If publishing the existing source allows any security flaws to be identified, then there are a huge number of devices out there that are vulnerable, and, unlike desktop OSes, cannot be easily patched.
Interesting discussion! Perhaps I can clarify a few points:
>David Wood seems to lack a little confidence in the quality of his codebase
My quoted comments (from http://www.dw2-0.com/2008/06/dangers-of-fragmentation.html) were about the quality and maturity of the code in Linux-based mobile software stacks, rather than about Symbian OS code.
I’ve written a bit more on this topic this morning, at http://www.dw2-0.com/2008/06/five-laws-of-fragmentation.html
>Of course it is possible to break things if there is not a continuous build process, appropriate unit and regression tests, and a culture of peer review
I agree these disciplines are very important, but claim that Symbian is already well positioned with regards to them.
>I would suspect that the best way forward is to dump the existing code (some of which is probably over 5 years old), and start from scratch with the level of programming discipline that open source demands
Some of the code is 14 years old! (And some of the design is nearly 20 years old.) However, Symbian has no intention to dump this code. First, it would be an enormous task to recreate all the 7 million lines of code of Symbian OS (not to mention all the LOC from S60, UIQ, and MOAP-S). Second, the code is in pretty good shape overall, due to having undergone frequent refactoring.
Having said this, I agree that it will take some time to review the whole codebase, before releasing it as open source. My Symbian colleague John Forsyth explains the reasoning, at http://johnforsyth.blogspot.com/2008/06/welcome-to-future-of-symbian.html.