Open source is very much on the minds of the people behind the Nokia 770 Internet tablet–part of a series of Net pads.
Executive “Janne Jormalainen stated that Nokia wants to play a much more active role in the open source community than it has in the past,” according to MobileBurn.
“To that end, Nokia is saying that it will not exercise any of its patents against the Linux kernel. Jormalainen said that Nokia chose Linux over Symbian OS because the new 770 is much closer to a PC than it is to a phone, and that Linux was the only viable Open Source OS in that realm.”
At the same time, Nokia is making it clear that the 770 is a consumer device and that the company wants Linux developers to pay more attention to the user interface than they have in the past.
This excites me very much (if only because I work for the company that manufacturers the chips for it–TI).
Unfortunately I bought my PDA (a Dell Axim X50V) 3 months ago.
Timing is everything.
Oh, heck, Robert, there are worse fates than going through life with an X50V. But, yes, even from afar, I think I’d take the Nokia. – David