24 July 2008

Going Open Source Not Enough
To Attract Freeware Developers To Symbian

One of Nokia's reasons for creating Symbian Foundation making Symbian open source was to drive innovation by attracting developers.

Symbian is still associated almost exclusively with Nokia, and the organization is aware this could be a problem with vp of strategy John Forsyth telling OSCON that "the rapidly forming group needs a "clean-room culture" with its own offices, and populated by technical experts from handset- and service-vendor members who don't simply echo their masters' corporate voice" reports The Register.

Company blog Nokia Conversations has a piece indicating that it may not be that simple.

The post quotes Nokia developer Janne Jalkanen (who apparently didn't realise it was an interview and described his comments as a rant) saying: "I doubt that open sourcing Symbian is going to help in the community building though.

There are two kinds of OSS developers: the guys who do things for fun, and the guys who do OSS because they are paid to do so.