Microsoft's view on Symbian going open source, bring your salt shaker

It is not surprising that Microsoft has sniffed at the rather cool move to make Symbian into an open-source project, but obviously more than a grain of salt should be used when listening to Microsoft's point of view. Symbian competes with Microsoft's mobile platform and the folks in Redmon have not exactly figured out what open source software is all about (though they have made strides in the area). Still, if you can factor out the fact that this is Microsoft speaking, there may be a valid observation under there. The last thing the mobile world needs is more fragmentation. Google's Android isn't much more than a much-talked about experiment, either. So Symbian is gutsy to take its success and jump into open source with it. But better be gutsy than to stand by and deny the force that open source has become.

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