Anyone visiting our offices in 1 Boundary Row in London or 1051 E Hillsdale Blvd in Foster City, California might notice a different feel about the place today. If so, it could be a spark of pure open source flowing through the buildings following the completion of the transfer of their leases to the Symbian Foundation.
Today we have completed an asset transfer agreement with Nokia that transfers not only the leases (and the furniture and IT equipment within them), but also all of the ‘Symbian’ related trademarks and domain names that Nokia acquired through its purchase of Symbian Software Limited last year. This is great news as it allows the Symbian Foundation to take independent steps forward in its set up process. The refit of 1 Boundary Row has already begun with a new reception being built, strongly influenced by the foundation brand, and we’ll be doing similar things in Foster City in the next couple of months.
Sounds like great stuff! I like the new header at the top of this blog, for what it’s worth, too.
Yes, the banner is really nice. I’m half expecting it to start animating at any minute…
Any chance of photos of the makeover, before and after it’s done?
Good idea – will take some snaps and post once it’s finished.
Hmm, I’m struggling to find somewhere to ask a few questions I have about the Symbian Foundation, and engage in open dialogue around them, so I figure that this blog (post) would be as good as any. I’m sure some may be obvious, or seem stupid to some (although I’m told that there are only stupid answers
)…
Here goes -
As a non-member of the Symbian Foundation, can I redistribute, reverse-engineer, modify or use code covered under the Symbian Foundation License v1.0 that has been released to the general public on a Symbian-owned site? (e.g. The new EUserHL code package) without requiring additional permission? From quickly reading the license, I get the feeling that I shouldn’t even possess such code, for some reason.
Having previously asked about an ARM emulator for Symbian OS, and receiving a positive answer, I don’t feel the need to enquire again.
Although I personally prefer S60, and the Foundation seems to have made it obvious that S60 is The Future of Symbian, are there any plans to release portions of the UIQ codebase at all? And will MOAP(S) just fade into total obscurity?
Assuming that everything goes to plan, and a Symbian^N release is made, is it then “safe” to redistribute or modify components included with older Symbian OS, S60 or UIQ SDKs, or certain sample code that Symbian have made available in the past? (e.g. the Cryptography APIs package contains a BSD-style license with a clause stating that although the code can be redistributed as-is, you can’t incorporate it into a product, and release the codebase as Open Source).
Are there any plans to release the source code, or portions of it to older versions of S60, Symbian OS or EPOC32, if only as reference material, or for nostaliga?
How will licensing around components using WebKit be handled, given that it’s covered under the LGPL, which presumably is incompatible with the EPL (although I’m free to be corrected on that)?
I’ve asked a lot, and I don’t expect to get an answer immediately (or even at all, given by how busy the Foundation folks are), although I’m thankful if someone’s willing to clarify this stuff.
@Tyson,
>> As a non-member of the Symbian Foundation, can I redistribute, reverse-engineer, modify or use code covered under the Symbian Foundation License v1.0 that has been released to the general public on a Symbian-owned site? (e.g. The new EUserHL code package) without requiring additional permission? From quickly reading the license, I get the feeling that I shouldn’t even possess such code, for some reason.
No. Indeed I understand your impression, as a non-member of the Symbian Foundation I wouldn’t expect you to get the source covered by the SFL, only the EPL’d parts. I’m a bit surprised by its use in EUserHL if code has been distributed (rather than just headers).
>>Although I personally prefer S60, and the Foundation seems to have made it obvious that S60 is The Future of Symbian, are there any plans to release portions of the UIQ codebase at all? And will MOAP(S) just fade into total obscurity?
I think you can basically consider the other UIs consigned to history, no new products are being developed using them as far as I’m aware. There may be bits of code from those other frameworks incorporated into the Symbian Foundation platform in future releases but the first release is just S60 5th Edition on Symbian OS v9.4 renamed – that’s a fairly good sign for the future direction.
>>Assuming that everything goes to plan, and a Symbian^N release is made, is it then “safe” to redistribute or modify components included with older Symbian OS, S60 or UIQ SDKs, or certain sample code that Symbian have made available in the past? (e.g. the Cryptography APIs package contains a BSD-style license with a clause stating that although the code can be redistributed as-is, you can’t incorporate it into a product, and release the codebase as Open Source).
No, this is just a plain licensing question – you have to comply with the terms of the license that the software was distributed under. Hopefully equivalent code will be provided under the EPL in the not too distant future. If something specific you want isn’t released then it would certainly be worth asking about it. When the Symbian Foundation developer website opens up to the public there will be discussion boards on which you are able to ask such questions, until then this blog is probably as good a place as any.
>>Are there any plans to release the source code, or portions of it to older versions of S60, Symbian OS or EPOC32, if only as reference material, or for nostaliga?
To be clear, I haven’t been involved in any discussions about what source will be released and what won’t, but I’d seriously doubt this, simply because the effort required to check the code was OK to release would be too great for the value it would add.
>>How will licensing around components using WebKit be handled, given that it’s covered under the LGPL, which presumably is incompatible with the EPL (although I’m free to be corrected on that)?
EPL is incompatible with the GPL but the LGPL is fine, although there may be some details around the exact form of combination of components (e.g. dynamic linking).
You could consider that a well-informed answer, rather than an official one. Hope it helped.
Thanks Mark for clarifying those questions for me.