On Feb 1, 2008 11:23 PM, David McNab <david(a)rebirthing.co.nz> wrote:
On Tue, 2008-01-29 at 10:12 +1300, Ian McDonald wrote:
I personally think that this is good news: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080128-nokia-buys-trolltech-will-beco...
Kinda worries me a bit.
If their smartphone products are anything to go by, it would seem that Nokia are heavily into crippleware - locked-down appliances - as opposed to open, general-purpose computing platforms.
I'd bet there's some folks in Nokia already pondering ways to Tivoise qt - for instance, leaving the GPL releases to languish several revs behind, and putting out future commercial releases as binary-only, under a license which forbids modification and imposes a J2ME/MIDP-like certification regime (read: walled garden, closed shop) on 3rd party apps - not so much for desktop/laptop, but definitely for embedded/mobile devices.
Sorry, but until I see evidence to the contrary, I'm viewing the Trolltech sell-out as somewhat of a Faustian deal - for way too small a purchase price.
Cheers David
Yes traditionally they have been but I see that changing now. Google the N800 and N810. They have always encouraged software development for phones on the S60 platform. They are getting more and more open by the day. I know of other open source work that they are involved in heavily as well but I'm not sure I can disclose what it is (I have talked to Nokia staff privately). But with all these things time will tell. Ian -- Web: http://wand.net.nz/~iam4/ Blog: http://iansblog.jandi.co.nz