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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.
Announcements IT
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].
        • 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.
          • I was under the impression that it was FreeBSD.

            • Thus not FAT no? (Score:1, Insightful)

              by Anonymous Coward
              I don't remember all the fuss or what the machinery involved was as I was just considering the use of computers in those days. And am not much more than lame these days.

              Something I just read on AnandTech got me thinking about the way that Linux suits the individual. With Windows, it is very much "one size fits all" and as far as that goes (which I believe is about as far it takes) it is a very nice toy; however with Linux and the other infinitely adjustable OSs, it is possible to get the perfect set of OS a

    • 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 I loved working on them. They are a great system. That'd be cool if I could grab an open source version for my own. Maybe I could install that joker on my LinkSys router...

    • Wake me up when they open-source that piece of turd syncing software, PC Suite [nokia-asia.com]. Or does the newer versions actually give me the opportunity to select, for each conflicting entry, which one is the newest? That, and a bit of stability and the ability to set proper defaults based on the phone model would get me right back on.
      • 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.
        • 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 is no opinion to move it to a NetBSD or FreeBSD and why linux ? Any definite advantages ?
          • i think its mostly cultural. the bsds would do the job
            equally as well (i used to be strongly biased in favor
            of bsd, but free at least has made a mess in the networking
            code with the addition of locks, nat, filters, firewalls,
            and all the other miscellany).

            i'm glad you liked ipso. peter grehan and bobby minnear
            were two of the people who just sat down and did a solid
            job. i've heard less than favorable things about its more
            recent maintenance history.
  • Seems perfect for Nokia, especially since newer versions of GForge [gforge.org] have a SOAP API; they could have shown some examples of a Nokia phone accessing GForge via a little proxy or some such.

    And GForge certainly could handle the load; check out the numbers on some of the bigger installations on the list of public GForge sites [gforge.org].

  • 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.
  • 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 handsets.

  • 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

      • Re:Where are the hacks? (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I think that part of the problem here is that untest bits and bobs aren't enabled since there is no assurance that the phone won't malfunction and impact the quality of the service for other network users.

        For example, the radio in the phone, for transmitting and recieveing data on the air will usually have calibration tables to ensure that the output is within certain tolerances. If you screw up these tables, you can easilly cause the radio to produce spurious emmissions during transmit which would impact

    • 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 programs, whatever I like. Make sure you get the updated version [nokia.com]though.

      • 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 crud on any of my machines - Nokia Audio Manager crashes on both my Athlon 64 and Sempron 64 boxes unless I delete cdmgr.dll, and only recognised phones during the install phase on my K6-2 box until I bought an add-in USB card and disabled the motherboard

    • So it's not what the previous poster meant, but here is a cool site with lots of 'cool hacks' open source software for mobile phones:

      http://ngphone.com/j2me/opensource/ [ngphone.com]

      and hey, while I'm at it, I might as well mention my own project to do scripting for j2me, Hecl [hecl.org].
  • Nokia hasn't come up with a GOOD PDA phone for the business class. Business people are a huge and growing a market for both carriers and handset makers. The reason being is, unlike the average user, they drop $600 at the drop of a hat for the latest and greatest. They buy the toys to go with it too. And they get premium voice/data plans.

    I like OSS don't get me wrong, but so far the push to put OSS platforms on phones has been pretty unimpressive. Even Nokia's brief attempt with the Linux device they ca
    • 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 for years and years.

      Personal milage may vary. But I would say most Nokia customers are die hard. Nokias phone have an ease of use unlike many others, and a 1999 nokia will function like a 2005 one.

      And most people want a phone to make and receive calls. Th
      • Now throw the techie guy, the really techie guy 35 years plus, the network engineer, software gury, unix freak, he wants a simple little phone, cause he has realized that life is more than futzing around with gear when he is not at work.

        Nearly... I'm only 34 ;)
    • 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 carrier doesn't bother carrying them, let alone offering nice rebates. People tend to buy them from other sources: online stores, ebay, etc.

      I'm mostly deciding between one of those and a treo when my current plan is up next year

    • 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.
    • Um, yeah. [nokia.co.uk]

      And that is ignoring all the very successful 9x00 series communicators.

      Seriously, I held the E61 today and it feels like an awesome pice of kit.
    • Check out their E-series phones. They basically have two major series now, N for multimedia and E for business.
    • 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 business users wanting an uber featured handset.
      I have a Nokia 6600.
      It connects to my IMAP account.
      It connects to IM services (SMS, AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, IRC etc. etc.)
      I can use it as an SSH terminal via Putty.
      It has a great camera and MMS services.

      I'm not sure w
  • Nokia is one of the companies that I really like. I really like their products. Most of what they did so far (that I have seen) was really good.
    Indeed, they did not come out with a PDA phone (and I believe they wont), but their latest 3G phones have Symbian OS, which supports writing application for their phones. In many senses it is not far from a simple PDA phone. Design is slick and functionality really good. I personally don't see the point yet in 3G and certainly see little value in video chat over t

    • Re:Nokia's approach (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bLanark (123342) * on Thursday November 03 2005, @03:56AM (#13939404) Homepage
      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.

      • As much as I agree with you on software patents, Nokia did have a point. If the US has software patents and is using them agresively (and we know they are), if the EU bans its companies from having any, then european companies have a very real problem. Even if they come up with new ideas, they can't be patented and in the US they will be. The solution is to get rid of software patents everywhere.
      • You boycott Nokia? But you just love google? Come on! Get real
        Google doesn't have a patent on their software?? They have many ( http://informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtm l?articleID=172901917 [informationweek.com]). This is plain silly. And the $350K, tax exampt, self serving, PR.. Not very different from Nokia's site, only more effective with students and workd press alike.
        Nothing wrong at all with software patents, as long as they are use appropriately (just like non-software patents). You don't like patents? Want to
    • Look at the Symbian operating system. Its an evolution of EPOC - one of the original PDA operatings systems, which predates Windows CE, at least in usable devices.

      In general, S60 devices (and UIQ) compete head on against Windows Mobile on pretty much all features.

      Also, Nokia do the communicator range, which are a true phone/PDA hybrid. Bit of a brick, but if you want a full keyboard, wifi, 640x200+ screen, there isn't much that really comes close.

      Okay, maybe I'm being pedantic, but Nokia *do* make P

  • 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.
    • True that. Motorola and Samsung also have developers website...not that you can find much in the way of useful resources on them. Some of the carriers are a little better. Nextel seems to be the best so far about releasing API's, but their phones are definitely more oriented towards business customers (plus the 3 day max battery life is a bit of a drag). Sprint has a nice looking developer's site, but doesn't release API's. If anything, they've tightened up since the merge with Nextel. Cingular's site is al
  • Sorry for stating the obvious but i dare say this is just Nokias way of developing a method to deter its way from being forced into using commerical apps for their consumers...

    I wonder if this will have any lasting affect on the Mobile/PDA industry causing competitors to lend from what Nokia appears to be starting.

    Good on ya Nokia for keepin it real! :)
  • It's interesting to note that in the mobile web browser space, Nokia has supported or licensed a number of different players. They've licensed Opera [opera.com] for a long time, they've helped fund Minimo [com.com] (Mozilla/Gecko), and of course they've just announced their own KHTML-based browser [kde.org].

    They seem to recognize that they're better off with choices -- if KHTML works best on one device, maybe Gecko will work best on another. Maybe Opera will be the best choice in another device, but they don't want to be stuck if, say,
  • So does that mean if i ever decide to get rid of my 3310... or whatever it is, I'll have a noce portable storage device, camera etc that can be used with my linux desktop?

    Sounds like a step in the right direction!
  • Did anybody else notice that one of the engineers [nokia.com] has a patent pending [uspto.gov] which looks to me remarkably like CVS/RCS/VSS?

    Maybe it's just that I can't read legalese.

  • Nokia lobbied hard for EU software patents (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Nokia suck [ffii.org]
  • And worse, it doesn't work when javascript is disabled.

    http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http:/ /opensourceenergy.org [netcraft.com]

    Eeeehhh?
  • I've just took a look at then Sofia-SIP stack. One of the most horribile pieces or code i've saw lately. I mean even oSIP which is the most rubbish SIP stack from the free world look way better than this.
    I won't compare it with YASS (Yate SIP stack) which is a piece of art if you compare it with SIP stack.
    I can't belive that in this days someone will write code in the way Sofia-SIP is writte. Just compare how complicated it is.

    http://voip.null.ro/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/yate/contri b/ysip/ [voip.null.ro] - Yate SIP stack

    http:/ [gnu.org]
    • Sorry to correct myself, but it's KHTML based.

      Based on KHTML and KJS from KDE's Konqueror open source project

    • Re:Other bits (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Another Gecko-based?

      Believe it or not, if you click on the OSS browser announcement, there's a page telling you all about it. Whatever will they think of next?

      (And here's the link [nokia.com])

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