Nokia's Savander: 'the Symbian Foundation will exist as an open source movement and we will use it'
The veracity of The Register's information regarding the Symbian Foundation's future remains to be seen -- but for what it's worth, Nokia's outspoken vice president of markets, Niklas Savander, seems to have some pretty strong language about the platform's future in a recent interview with CNET Asia. Here's the money quote in response to a question about whether Espoo will pull the Foundation's operations back in-house after having spun them off as an open-source operation in 2008:
"I don't see any reason for that. What would be the benefit of doing that? We have made it open source, so it's, of course, up to the different users whether they want to use it. The whole notion behind the open-source community is that people can choose to leave or not to leave. We have quite a few Japanese vendors that are pushing Symbian products. The Symbian Foundation will exist as an open source movement and we will use it. Other people are welcome to use it if they want to. If they don't, that's not going to change things. That's how open source works."
So Nokia's public-facing philosophy seems to be that they don't care who -- if anyone -- uses Symbian, they're going to continue to let the Foundation do its thing. Meanwhile, another part of the interview highlights the fact that they're still planning to continue to drive Symbian downmarket. Obviously, Nokia's internal roadmap could differ significantly from Savander's message, but so far, we don't have any hint from these guys that changes are afoot. That said, the Foundation's funding situation could force Nokia to take action if it wants the platform to continue to develop and evolve, but we suppose we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.
Another interesting tidbit in the interview highlights the fact that one of new Nokia CEO Stephen Elop's edicts has been to significantly reduce the amount of time between a product's announcement and its release, which might be the driving force behind his decision to push the introduction of Nokia's first MeeGo products into 2011. As much as we hate waiting, we'd say that's a stellar direction for the company to take -- nothing builds animosity toward a product more than letting it waste away in a purgatory of unattainability (assuming your name isn't Eldar Murtazin) for six-plus months.
