
The whole two-year process feels like a traditional corporate engineering culture trying to manage change around a well established product space. This would be great if this was what Symbian Ltd. was to remain (but even then it risks being a dead-end overtaken by other solutions with the coming mobile Internet wave). When IBM began the Eclipse Project, they put safe IP structures around a software base, some simple governance and a road map in place, and got on with the work. Later, the Eclipse Foundation was created as a better way to manage the inbound innovation and growth under a well defined IP regime. Now, the Eclipse Foundation and Mozilla Corp. provide excellent blueprints for what the Symbian Foundation needs to be. Nokia already has the inhouse experience to build from those blueprints. Engineering cultural change is difficult but essential here. While one wouldn't expect Symbian Ltd. to release its core assets while awaiting regulatory approval, there have to be other complementary software assets internally available that could be released as early experiments to begin to get the IT structure in place and begin the cultural learning. Two years gives Android and LiMo and even Windows Mobile too much time to erode a community that should rightly be coming to the Symbian Foundation.
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