OStatic

When Nokia announced that it was launching the Symbian Foundation to great fanfare, it had within its grasp that rarest of opportunities to move swiftly and become the dominant open source mobile platform. Alas, just one and a half years later, they have seemingly ceded that position to Android. Instead of recognizing the threat from Android and making strategic changes to counter, they instead criticized Google's closed-door development of Android before releasing a line of code themselves. When criticizing competitors, it helps to have your own house in order first.

?In October, the Symbian Foundation released the Symbian kernel sources to the world, and the rest of the world (read: developers) collectively responded, Great. Where's my Android phone? I've often lauded Google for its ability to fuse the marketing, PR and developer benefits of open source projects into one seemless operation. It would seem that Symbian could stand to learn a few things. The question is, is it too late?

We've done a number of posts lately on the incredible momentum that the open source Android operating system has. It's being supported by nearly every major smartphone maker, with players such as Acer and Motorola putting huge bets behind it. Acer's new Liquid Android smartphone has the trendy Snapdragon chip from Qualcomm built in, a sign that the OS could boost the prospects of cutting-edge new processors. Verizon Wireless recently inked a broad-based deal (GigaOm Pro, sub. req'd) with Google that will mean, since T-Mobile and Sprint are also on board, that U.S.-based Android phone users will have solid choice among wireless carriers. Yesterday, Acer announced that it is going to offer dual-boot versions of its popular Aspire One netbooks that run both Android and the upcoming Windows 7 OS. That could potentially help Android spread to many new users who wouldn't otherwise try it.

But, precisely because of the new horizons for Android, there are some unexpected directions it could go in, some good, some bad. Here are two scenarios that I don't think are widely expected.

Keep May 19 - 20, 2010 open if you plan to attend the next Google I/O Developer Conference. It's slated to be held at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA and registration opens in January. The event brings thousands of developers together for a two-day sprint through session about some of Google's most popular products and tools, including App Engine, Google Web Toolkit, Android, and Chrome.

The prospects for mobile open source just get brighter and brighter. Following months of rumors, Verizon Wireless has said that it will put substantial resources behind the open source Android platform, in a broad partnership with Google. Google and Verizon will work together to deliver new products and services that they say will arrive in the hands of consumers quickly. Notably, both companies have pledged to put unique applications onto handsets, including apps from their internal developers and others from third-party developers.

In other mobile open source news, Palm held an event in the San Francisco Bay Area last night, at which it said that although the company usually charges developers $99 to build apps on the WebOS platform, now it will waive the $99 fee if the apps are open source. Here are more details on both announcements.

Sometimes it takes a dispute to spur change and innovation. This is what comes to mind while watching the aftermath of the recent spat between Google and a developer named Steve Kondik, who also goes by Cyanogen. Kondik's Cyanogenmod software framework is a modified Android ROM that angered Google because it included a number of proprietary Google applications, such as GMail and YouTube. While Google offers its own proprietary applications through Android, the company sent a cease-and-desist letter to Kondik, causing the open source community to rail against Google.

I'm actually in agreement with ZDNet's Dana Blankenhorn, who says that Google was correct to be concerned about use of its proprietary applications because protecting them lets it retain legal cause against malware aimed at its servers using its software. What's really interesting to see, though, is that both Kondik and the open source community are responding to the dispute with creative Android-based efforts.