10.22.10
Stephen Elop Says No New Linux Phones From Nokia This Year, Talks About Cross-platform Qt
Summary: The mobile Linux stack which it true to standards/LSB is alive and well, but no phone release date has yet been given by Microsoft’s former president who became Nokia’s CEO
NOKIA is one of the biggest developers of Linux right now. Its number of patches exceeds that of many other companies. That’s why having a new CEO from Microsoft concerned us somewhat (see links at the bottom). Well, Nokia has just published the following from Stephen Elop:
There have been various comments made at various points in time about the anticipated availability of our first MeeGo device and versions of the MeeGo software. My first impressions of our MeeGo work inspires both confidence and excitement, however it is also clear to me that our first MeeGo device will be a 2011 event.
Intel said something similar a few weeks ago. It would be nicer to have commitment to dates.
There are some Symbian- and Qt-related announcements as well [1, 2]:
Nokia has announced some new plans to refine its mobile platform strategy. The company says that the current Symbian versioning scheme will be dropped in favor of a more rapid and incremental approach to development. The company also affirmed its commitment to the open source Qt development toolkit, which will become the “sole focus” of Nokia’s application development efforts across both Symbian and the Linux-based MeeGo platform.
There has been no talk of Vista Phone 7 [sic] at Nokia for a while, despite rumours. Maybe it won’t be so bad for Linux after all. It’s too early to tell because of repeated cases of procrastination. No future device with MeeGo (especially phone) has yet been named or properly introduced. █
More on Nokia:
- If You Can’t Beat Them, Hijack Them (Microsoft Joins Nokia and It Already Shows)
- Linux Battle in Mobile Phones Becomes Primarily Legal, Not Technical, Due to Software Patents
- Taking Over Linux, by Proxy
- Microsoft Passes More of Its Executives to the MSBBC. What About Nokia?
- Microsoft President Quits, But is Nokia the Next Victim?
- Microsoft Insiders Galore: BBC, Nokia, Others Already Damaged by Microsoft Hires
- Linspire/Ballnux in Tablets; HP Possibly Experiments With Vista 7 in Slate After Abandoning It, Then Hiring From Microsoft
- New Article Says Nokia Might be Bought by Microsoft After Appointing Microsoft President as CEO
- Entryism Watch: Yahoo! Keeps Being Abducted by Microsoft Executives, HP Cancels Android Projects After CEO Appointment From SAP
- As Expected, Nokia and HP Betray Linux Under Microsoft-sympathetic New Leadership
- Head of Microsoft Romania Quits, Entryism Revisited
Content is available under CC-BY-SA
twitter said,
October 22, 2010 at 7:59 am
If there is fragmentation and waste in the gnu/linux world, it is stuff like this that creates it. GPE and Opie were excellent mobile platforms back in 2003 or so but the world’s telcos did not want their users to have software freedom. Users of GPE got X11 and most of what Debian had to offer. Instead of seeing devices with these mature platforms, developer effort was wasted creating apps for user hostile hype phone and android platforms. Tivoised android itself is an example of wasted developer effort. Now we see Microsoft entry into Nokia, which had come farther than most towards free software mobile devices, and more effort to port QT to Windows. If ever there was a waste of time, fooling with Windows is it. Behold the fruits of Steve Ballmer’s effort to “outsmart open source”. We can assume that the same source of trouble, propaganda and moles is also behind the apparent lack of cooperation required to prevent the development of free accelerated drivers for ARM chipsets.
These efforts have mostly harmed Nokia, Google and smart phone users but have not helped Microsoft or Telcos much. Microsoft profits are down and Windows is increasingly irrelevant thanks to all of the competition, both free and non free. Windows Mobile remains a bad joke and Windows 7 is not selling. Telcos have relegated free software to those brave enough to jailbreak their devices for a community version of android, but they can not put off Open Spectrum forever. The technology just keeps getting better, and the last mile will sooner than later be free. Once that happens, free software devices will quickly take over the market. Google and Nokia might be in a better position than most to take advantage of this but they could be making money off it now instead of supporting the incumbent techtards.