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Nokia Starts Open Source Website

Posted by samzenpus on Wed Nov 02, 2005 08:01 PM
from the free-phones dept.
X-Fade writes "Nokia launched OpenSource.nokia.com today. It is the first place to look for information concerning Nokia involvement in the Open Source community. The Projects page lists all Nokia developed downloadable code including: Maemo (Development platform for Linux based handhelds), MobileNews (Mobile NNTP reader), Python for S60, Sofia-SIP (SIP User-Agent library) and more. The website also features a list of all projects Nokia contributed to."

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  • Ipso? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ponds (728911) on Wednesday November 02 2005, @08:03PM (#13937398)
    Wake me up when Nokia open-sources Ipso.
    • Re:Ipso? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Saiyine (689367) on Wednesday November 02 2005, @08:10PM (#13937453) Homepage

      Nokia IPSO is an appliance-optimized, security-hardened, clusterable OS capable of supporting a wide range of Nokia and partner security applications.

      More info here [nokia.com].
      [ Parent ]
        • Re:Ipso Faxso (Score:3, Interesting)

          Ipso is not for PDAs. While most people know Nokia as a mobile vendor, they are also one of the largest Firewall/VPN appliance vendors. Ipso is a highly optimized i386 OS based on NetBSD.
    • Re:Ipso? (Score:2)

      Wake me up when Nokia open-sources Ipso.

      My thoughts exactly! I see some posters here are pooh-poohing the IPSO platform. I personally have built about 300 Nokia IPSO firewalls that were routers, VPN endpoints, or Check Point FireWall-1 appliances and

      • Re:Ipso? (Score:2)

        Come on, it would be nice to have a security-focued open-source operating system.... ...that isn't associated with Theo De Raadt.
      • Re:Ipso? (Score:5, Informative)

        by convolvatron (176505) on Wednesday November 02 2005, @09:14PM (#13937777)
        i was one of the engineers on ipso. its not completely useless,
        its lovely to do network level code in, and it was about 2x faster
        than the freebsd it was based on (1.2) in forwarding speed. it
        had decent custom routing protocol implementations.

        but there really isn't any need for a seperate implementation
        any longer. really. all you would be doing is losing out on
        drivers. i think its lived just as a marketing token, a random
        differentiator. and nokia can vaugely feel they got something
        from buying ipsilon. i always hear about internal struggles to
        replace it with linux, and remain thoroughly suprised it hasn't
        happened yet.
        [ Parent ]
        • Re:Ipso? (Score:2, Interesting)

          I worked with networking code in IPSO for some time on the P022 machines and found it a rather nice thing to work with. It is sturdy and does its job well. If there are internal struggles to actually replace it with a newer OS I do not understand why there
  • GroupThink Alert! (Score:3, Funny)

    by 42Penguins (861511) on Wednesday November 02 2005, @08:12PM (#13937460)
    The OSS browser supports DRM, oh noes!

    What category does Nokia go in now that they have a open source site?
    Are they formerly evil turned good, like IBM? (wait...do we like ibm this week?)
    Or are they the antichrist, posing as good?

    Most. Confusing. Finns. Ever.
  • looks promising (Score:5, Insightful)

    by idlake (850372) on Wednesday November 02 2005, @08:18PM (#13937506)
    Maemo looks great, both technically and the way they are going about setting it up. I particularly like the fact that they have built their environment on top of X11, which means that it will be much easier to port custom software to it than with Qt/Embedded devices.

    Python for the S60 is nice, too, of course.

    Altogether, I'm wondering whether Nokia is planning on moving their entire phone line over to Linux at some point.
  • Not everything (Score:2, Informative)

    I am still waiting to see the FPS-10 service box sources, that is entirely based on Linux kernel. For people that have no idea, this box is sold by Nokia to their authorized service centers and is used to repair/tune/check faults in
    all Nokia mobile handset
  • For downloading anything.. (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 02 2005, @08:32PM (#13937574)
    ..registration is required. Luckily bugmenot has some valid accounts, for example: harryman84/blahblah, kutzooi23/nokianokianokia, bugmenot2/passworded
  • Where are the hacks? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MLopat (848735) on Wednesday November 02 2005, @08:38PM (#13937607) Homepage
    Oh yeah I'm really excited. I can look at all the cool toys I can't load onto my phone because my local provider has locked them out. Hope they make the site actually useful for us and maybe post a link or two about how to get a cable for a particular Nokia handset and the cracks to circumvent the locking mechanisms installed by the retailers.
    • Re:Where are the hacks? (Score:4, Informative)

      by puto (533470) <theflatline@yahoo.com> on Wednesday November 02 2005, @09:41PM (#13937932) Homepage
      howardforum.com anything and everything you need to know. Sorted by carrier and phone. You can ask and receive any answer you need there.

      And as for unlocking phones. Well go for it, all my have the hidden features enabled, and I work for the largest cell carrier in the US. Did I get the answers from work, nope. Got them from the web.

      Here is the issue. The features are generally locked because they are untested, are have no bearing on what service your provider is selling you. Also if you flash firmware, or in general screw some of the software up, and the phone goes tits up, you will not be under warranty anymore.

      I spend a fair amount of my time explaining to customers if they flash something to the phone motorola, or nokia did not write, and their phone is no longer working. IT is not a warranty issue, because it is out of spec for the device.

      I doube Nokia would post a crack, because when a phone is warrantied through a carrier, it is then warrantied generally back to the manufacturer. So nokia would be shooting itself in the foot.

      Cables you can find anywhere on the net, hell best buy in the us sells a kit with cables and software that lets you get into about 99.9% of all phones on the market.

      Just do it at your own risk.

      Puto
      [ Parent ]
    • I'm not sure if this is what you mean, but you can download the Nokia PC suite program and get yourself a blutooth dongle. I had serious problems with my Nokia until I got those two, now I can surf on GPRS from the laptop, access all facilities, install p

      • Re:Where are the hacks? (Score:3, Insightful)

        Absolutely brilliant, Nokia PC Suite. This is the one thing that they should product an Open Source version of - but then until recently they didn't even have a Mac equivalent.

        The current version, and its 3 predecessors, are the slowest, buggiest bit of

  • Are you sure? (Score:3, Funny)

    by labratuk (204918) on Wednesday November 02 2005, @10:13PM (#13938103)
    Nokia Starts Open Source Website

    Wow! A website? These people are serious.
    • As always, I fly a desk for the largest cell carrier in the us.

      Nokia does not offer a really good device with PDA like functionality. Mainly because Nokia sticks to making phones that make and take calls. And above all tend to be high quality and last fo
    • What about the line of "Communicator" phones which run Symbian? They are aimed squarely at the business class, and seem to totally own the ultra-high-end phone market. The problem is these things can be so damn expensive ($900!) that your typical phone c
    • Re:nokia is going to loose ground. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by adtifyj (868717) on Wednesday November 02 2005, @10:14PM (#13938109)
      I realise you are not critising OSS, and you raise a lot of interesting points about Nokia, but I would like to point out that when large companies announce they are jumping on the open source bandwagon, they are not hoping the OSS community helps them add zero's to the balance sheet.

      They are buying kudos with two very important groups: CTOs and engineers in the industry. Of course they may also encourage external participation, and accept patches, but that is rarely the primary focus. A sub-domain listing open source sends a number of very clear statements about the company. here are a few..

      • Microsoft does not have them on a leash,
      • Interoperability is not just a buzzword on their marketing material,
      • An appreciation that open source software underpins everything in I.T. these days. 5 years ago, most CTOs didn't realise this. Now, sensible CTOs wants to know that every staff member at the vendor is aware of this fact, otherwise they will be working with fools who have "not invented here" syndrome and other related ailments.
      • The board of the company has embraced the economic advantages of open source.
      • They allow and encourage engineers to work on open source tools in order to perform their jobs. With a website like this, Nokia's HR department would be flooded with quality resumes.
      • The brain-power of the engineering department is worth showcasing.
      [ Parent ]
    • lose
      a lot
      hail mary
      hedge bets

      I'm a zealot but I can't see an attack in your post.

      Nokia have people working hard as OSS developers, just like Red Hat et.al.

      Perhaps you forget one of the OSS mantra's Release Early, Release Often

      I'm not convinced about busines
    • Re:Nokia's approach (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bLanark (123342) * on Thursday November 03 2005, @03:56AM (#13939404) Homepage Journal
      I am now boycotting Nokia - I will never buy another Nokia phone. (In fact, I took a couple of Nokia chargers in to work today - I'll never need them again.)

      My reason for this is their stance on Software Patents in the EU - they lobbied hard for them. See, for example, The Register [theregister.co.uk] or The FFII [ffii.org]. I contacted them (by email, IIRC) to tell them my position, but never heard anything back.

      For them to launch an open-source website is simply an attempt to gain some PR, or, put another way, some community "kudos". And, for goodness' sake, starting a web site does not require a huge investment. This is a PR exercise, through-and-through.

      What Google [yahoo.com] did, for example, will probably help a lot more.

      [ Parent ]