Nokia’s primary operating system, Symbian, has it had its day in the mobile space? Well it would appear so in the eyes of none other than the Symbian Foundation that hosts documentation, source code and fixes for the ailing operating system.
According to an article over on Techcrunch by Erick Schonfeld, the Symbian Foundation is to close all open source websites as of the 17th of December, and although technically Symbian will still be open source it would be rather unrealistic for developers to access it.
Apparently the Symbian Foundation developer blog has posted that open source code and other info will be “available in some form, most likely on a DVD or USB hard drive upon request to the Symbian Foundation. . . . A charge may be levied for media and shipping.”
Thus it would appear that Symbian will become open source in name only as how can it be classified as open source if not freely available. No doubt Nokia will still develop Symbian for their mobile phones, but this is just another nail in the Symbian coffin.
There is of course always a chance that someone else will pick up the reins and host all the necessary, but in all honesty does anyone really care enough?