OStatic

It was well over a year ago now that news of the Symbian operating system--found on approximately half of global smartphones--going open source broke. The news was interpreted as particularly important to Nokia's forward-looking Symbian strategy, but after all this time, an open source version of Symbian's platform is still only in beta testing.

Today, though, as EETimes notes, Symbian has released its platform microkernel, and software development kit (SDK), as open source under the Eclipse Public License. The Symbian Foundation claims that it is moving quickly toward an open source model, which is questionable, but the release of the EKA2 kernel is a signal that Symbian still means business about adopting an open source model.

The Software Freedom Law Center and Red Hat's CEO rag on the patent system. Nobody can write software without risking a lawsuit.

Ingres goes after Sun's customers. The company is promoting a migration path from the MySQL database.

Apple's iPhone now has one-third the market share of desktop Linux. NetApplications measured how much Linux and the iPhone are used to access the Internet.

FOSS sexism claims stir up the pot. Bruce Byfield's recent article on the topic has people talking.

ARMing desktop Linux. ARM-based netbooks are on their way and they can't run Windows.

It's no news to anyone that Palm is desperate to make a success of its Palm Pre phone. It was met with very solid reviews initially, and AdMob's latest wireless traffic metrics show it gaining market share. Nevertheless, Palm's recent revenue forecast missed Wall Street applications by a long shot, and that's heading into the important holiday season, when the iPhone and many new Android handsets are likely to go on a tear.

Apple's success with the iPhone, of course, has a lot to do with its App Store, which has now moved over 2 billion applications. To put that 2 billion number in perspective, that's not far behind the total number of songs sold on iTunes since its inception years ago. Palm would very wise to try to compete with Apple's App Store through openness in its Palm App Catalog, along the lines of how Android Market pursues openness. That's why it's disturbing news that a Netscape veteran is reporting that his apps were rejected from the App Catalog because the source code was available elsewhere.