Guest post by “Don’t expect RIM to open source its entire operating system, or its radio stack. But the original smartphone company is gambling its future success on open source, and it has an expert on board to help. Mary Branscombe asked Senior Technical Director for Open Software, Eduardo Pelegri Llopart, where open source fits in at RIM.”
No, things are not that simple.
QNX6 did have source available, until they closed it up again after being acquired by RIM.
Some parts are still on the Foundry27 site, but not the kernel or userland.
And for PC users the availability of QNX (even the ability to write apps/drivers) is very difficult.
Why they make usage from PC users so difficult?
IMHO it has strongly contributed. People would buy MS-Phones because the OS is familiar.
The most interesting stuff is the Qt snippet:
“The Cascades 3D graphics framework uses Qt Core, and QML (the Qt Modelling Language) to give PlayBook 2 and BlackBerry 10 apps a new signature look.”
I don’t actually know if this information has been officially stated anywhere before. Using QML, RIM could create an absolutely competitive user experience, on par with iOS and WP7 (on framerate and fluidity), and easily exceeding Android UX.
And this is something that will get much better on Qt5, when the graphics model becomes more directly GPU accelerateable (ok, that’s not a real word).
And once that absolutely competitive user experience is there and short before hitting the market like a bomb Microsoft comes along, partners with RIM, the absolutely competitive user experience is dead before released and RIM loses half it’s merit in just some months?
It was part of the BlackBerry DevCon key note by Alec Saunders
http://www.blackberrydevcon.com/europe/webcast (Qt part beginning at about 41:15, including a demo of QtQuick on the Playbook by Lars Knoll)
I believe that RIM’s QML-using framework Cascades referred to in the article is already using an OpenGL ES scene graph for rendering.
Cool, thanks for the info! Also Intel was planning to retrofit the Scene Graph for Qt 4.8, before butchering MeeGo.
RIM has a terrific product in the Playbook.
If RIM fails it will be down to the economy i think.
Open source is not right for RIM. Reason is black berry services on it’s own will not sustain the company in it’s current form.
It does not make any other products like HP.
It does not have a advertising business model like Google.
Who will maintain the backend of Blackberry services with so much open source devices from other manufacturers floating around. Will it bring an inconsistent experience? Will you have to charge for it? Or just let that part go.
You can’t compete with Asian manufacturers.
Open source will only be a RIM deathbed option whereby the companies revenue is so reduced that it can actually make money from third party manufacturers using Blackberry services and licensing patents.
Edited 2012-02-26 22:08 UTC
It’s very unlikely that they will do nothing but Blackberry mail services for something that targets the consumer-market.
That free and libre Software and making money out of it does not exclude each other was proven last but not last by the market-leader Android. Also its not all black or white. You can combine both worlds like its also done on Android (yes, you can pay for apps even there and they are making money with that!).
RIM’s a lot like Nokia at this point. The only thing that’ll save them is more proactive management and a clear, well defined business plan to regain and expand their target market.
Can open source be a vital part of that? Maybe. It has to be done properly though, as part of a committed effort with a clear business aim or else they’re just shooting themselves in the foot again.
Its “the only thing” that makes the difference. If the management keeps the course and makes there next products attractive for developers – so lot of interesting applications for users are produced – and for users – look, feel, price and marketing – then they may indeed offer something selling well.
short answer: “Yes” with an “If,” long answer: “No” — with a “But.”
There’s probably not a lot that will help RIM. It will help the software that they open up more than their profit margins.
Why would a developer spend time working on open parts of the RIM software?
There are plenty open source projects to work on that DO have the right open source culture. Why spend your energy on RIM ?
http://bit.ly/lf4GeX
LOL
What put me off buying a blackberry handset was the requirement to use their closed source server, which also depends on other third party closed source software…
By contrast, i can use an iphone or android device with open source backend servers, either standard imap or an open implementation of activesync such as z-push.
If RIM had an open source backend server, which could talk to open source mail/groupware servers, then i might have considered one of their handsets.
RIM is in step 3 of the “things that didn’t work out” list:
1. Launch ground breaking revolucionary new thing
2. Deny that it is not working
3. Try to open source it
4. Donate to the Apache project and declare it as dead.
Edited 2012-02-27 21:24 UTC
“I am sorry, our project was a failure. We had to open source it.”