Forum Nokia has released a whole new generation of Carbide C++ software development kits, for creating native Symbian OS applications. V2.0 is now out and, significantly, all editions are now totally free, helping to reduce the barriers to entry to Symbian development. Rafe will probably comment here with more details in due course... (via Lucian)
Read on in the full article.
Good. This would be a nice boost for freeware and open source software. But the next step they should take is to add the option to our Symbian mobiles with which we can manager the digital certificates for signed applications ourself, so that we, and not Nokia, are in control which software we can install on our own phones. Otherwise there will be little difference in the amount of free and open software for Symbian.
Fuzzillogic: Nokia was never acting alone with regards to either Symbian Signed or Platform Security so it is a great exaggeration to say that Nokia is controlling what you install on device. However, relaxing the signing channels would be indeed a desired move and we can only hope that the Symbian Foundation (and not Nokia) will do something about this.
Steve: While Carbide does include an SDK (for plug-ins) it is in fact an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) that goes free, with all its tools. The S60 SDKs that can be used with this IDE have been free all along.
EuclideanLogic: since Nokia has been the biggest shareholder of, and now even owns Symbian, I think it's fair to point the finger at Nokia. Other companies are involved, ofcourse, but for the sake of simplicity I do think Nokia is in control of my device, even after purchase. This kind of behaviour is a dealbreaker when I'll choose my next mobile.
Anyway, I'm curious where this is heading. Nokia/Symbian claim "openess" for Symbian, and now that they've released this IDE/SDK and when the opensource Symbian it might actually look that way. But only for mobile phone manufacturers and telco's. As long as the consumers can't flash a modified OS to their phone and their phone is severly restricted with this DRM-scheme, little will change. Nokia released an update for the N95-1 recently, mostly to close the bug that allowed owners to break through the DRM and install the software without hassle.
And let's not forget is was Nokia (amongst others) who successfully kept Theora video out of the HTML5 specs. How "pro-openess" is that?
So, excuse me for not believing Nokia really is opening up Symbian and their phones. I think the whole "openess scheme" is mostly (false) marketing, including the release of this IDE/SDK.
Now what they need is an App Store. Apple has 300 million downloads of 10,000 applications.
Does anyone know if the emulators work in Vista?
The S60 3rd FP1 emulator didn't, which basically stopped me even attempting C++ development on N95, with the lack of on-device debugging. I was very disappointed, having enjoyed development on Windows Mobile (which had on-device debugging support and a working emulator).
Fuzzillogic: Consumers can flash software through the Nokia Software Update 😊 As for consumers flashing their own firmware ... well, that is not what a consumer cares about, in 99.9999999% of the cases. Developers are not consumers from a phone manufacturer's perspective. They are partners, business partners.
argh: Why don't you google for something like "install S60 SDK Vista"? One of the results takes to the blog that was the source of this post in AAS