I keep running into the “glamour question”. Scott from Mippin raised it again the other day, in a shrewd comment in response to Roger Nolan’s recent analysis “Symbian’s open source challenge”:
I think that one inherent disadvantage for Symbian compared to Apple and Android is the glamour factor. This can be demonstrated by looking at the comments stream to this excellent post. If it had been talking about Apple or Android it would have people crawling over themselves to comment. Symbian just does not elicit the same excitement. This means – more meaningfully perhaps – that developers gain more kudos for developing for one of the glamour platforms than for Symbian (despite its market share).
Scott suggests that one reason for the reduced excitement over Symbian lies “the complexity of Symbian. It is just too complex and developers stay away“. Previously, I’ve offered my own list of “Symbian passion killers” that can hinder developers from becoming fully inspired (and therefore fully productive) about creating software for Symbian OS. As I’ve said before, the plans for “Symbian 2.0” in the wake of the creation of the Symbian Foundation include several important projects to address passion killers.
I heard quite a lot more, today, about developer passion. I was attending Day One of FOWA – the Future of Web Apps expo, taking place at London’s ExCeL conference centre. I experienced considerable déjà vu at this event, since the annual Symbian Smartphone Shows were held there from 2002 to 2007. The layout of the keynote hall and the so-called “university sessions” reminded me a lot of similar layouts from bygone Smartphone Shows. The audience seemed of comparable size too. But whereas the motivation of many who attend the Smartphone Show is to make business connections and to promote the success of their companies, the motivation I sensed from many of the FOWA attendees was rather different: it was to explore new technologies, and to exult in new products and new processes.
For example, Edwin Aoki, AOL Technology Fellow, included the following remarks in his keynote speech “Web apps are dead, long live web apps”:
What drives developers? It’s not just money. It’s building out communities. It’s building pride. It’s dedication and passion, not dollars and pounds.
And I couldn’t help noticing how frequently speakers used words like “amazing”, “exciting”, “awesome”, “kickass”, and “cool”. At first I wondered if they were joking or being ironic, but then I realised they were un-selfconscious. They were simply being enthusiastic.
Blaine Cook, ex Chief Engineer at Twitter, and Joe Stump, Lead Architect of Digg, performed a dynamic two-hander on the subject of “Languages don’t scale”. Taking turns, they ripped into features of programming languages that, in their words, made the languages “suck”. Thus “here’s why PHP sucks…” and “here’s why Ruby sucks…” and “Python sucks as well…”. But this was just a prelude to their main theme, which is that you should beware asking committed developers to switch from one language to another. Language choice is often personal – and often heartfelt. According to the speakers, scale performance issues that sometimes bedevil web applications, only rarely come down to language issues; instead, they usually depend on hardware architecture or network architecture. Hence the advice:
Value happy coders! Happy coders are productive coders. Let them work with the languages they love!
Many of the speakers oozed passion. I was particularly impressed by Francisco Tolmasky, co-founder of 280 North. His presentation title hardly sounded earth-shattering: “Building Desktop Caliber Web Applications with Objective-J and Cappuccino”. However, the delivery was captivating and uplifting. (And the technology of their product does look attractive…)
All this brings back to mind the glamour question: To what extent can Symbian’s developer events match this kind of enthusiasm – an enthusiasm driven by love of product and love of technology, rather than (just) love of market opportunity and commercial reward? To what extent can Symbian OS become viewed as glamorous and exciting, rather than just some kind of incumbent?
Happily, there’s a lot of fascinating technology on Symbian’s roadmap. There are also new tools that should appeal to various different kinds of developers. For those who value choice of languages, there’s a growing range of language options available for Symbian OS. For those who are interested in the hardware, there are literally scores of new phone models in the pipeline. Some of this will fall under public spotlight in under two weeks’ time at the 2008 Smartphone Show.
This year, the show has moved from ExCeL to Earls Court. The more significant change is that, this year, there’s a “Mobile Devfest” which is running alongside the main show:
Mobile DevFest is Symbian’s premier conference for developers and has been designed to provide developers with deep technical training and information on building mobile software solutions for the next generation of mobile phones powered by Symbian OS.
Mobile DevFest is the ideal developer event for anyone engaged in building, or interested in building mobile applications on Symbian OS.
Mobile DevFest is the best way to stay ahead of today’s mobile technologies. It provides in-depth technical sessions, delivered by industry experts in the mobile development space.
I’m eagering looking forward to taking part – and to gauging the degree of passion at the show. And in the meantime, if you think your own new product or solution for the Symbian space is particularly exciting, I’ll be pleased to hear about it!
dw2 
David,
I’ve said this elsewhere, but it bears repeating: a lot of this difference is cultural.
The web, and Web 2.0 especially, is very much a Silicon Valley thing. Symbian is centred in London. Californians are far more demonstrative than Londoners.
As an Australian perhaps it is easier for me to see these cultures (because we don’t really belong to either, but sit somewhere between). There is a deep running passion in the Symbian community — it’s just not expressed demonstratively.
Part of the culture, too, is what is valued: because of their more demonstrative bent, Americans are more enamoured of the pretty surface of things — thus Apple’s focus on how things look more than how they work.
Don’t believe that’s true? A classic example is the way the iPhone handled view transitions vs. Symbian’s approach. On the iPhone, the framework stored a JPEG of the most recent or default state of a view, and slid that across the screen as soon as the view was activated. In the meantime the view could be grinding away actually getting ready. This lead to the strange behavior of, say, the contacts list when there were lots of contacts — the application would appear to “freeze” for quite some time before it abruptly became responsive. Now Apple has since realised that this “glamorous approach” actually causes more problems than it causes (no way for the user to differentiate between application states; security issues), and has reverted to the boring, Symbian-style where the view draws itself as it can, usually starting with an empty list.
Another example is Google’s Web 2.0 apps. They look great, but their functionality is extraordinarily shallow. (In fact, you could say that about the iPhone, etc.)
The real shame is that the media are so facile and shallow themselves that they can’t see beyond the surface, and thus hype the products that focus on the surface and neglect the depths. That is what Symbian needs to address.
(In other words, it’s a PR problem, not a strictly technical one — though there may be some technical solutions needed in a PR fix.)
Cynical? It’s hard to be too cynical where the media is involved… 😉
Comment by Malcolm Lithgow — 9 October 2008 @ 11:28 pm
David,
I’ve said this elsewhere, but it bears repeating: a lot of this difference is cultural.
The web, and Web 2.0 especially, is very much a Silicon Valley thing. Symbian is centred in London. Californians are far more demonstrative than Londoners.
As an Australian perhaps it is easier for me to see these cultures (because we don’t really belong to either, but sit somewhere between). There is a deep running passion in the Symbian community — it’s just not expressed demonstratively.
Part of the culture, too, is what is valued: because of their more demonstrative bent, Americans are more enamoured of the pretty surface of things — thus Apple’s focus on how things look more than how they work.
Don’t believe that’s true? A classic example is the way the iPhone handled view transitions vs. Symbian’s approach. On the iPhone, the framework stored a JPEG of the most recent or default state of a view, and slid that across the screen as soon as the view was activated. In the meantime the view could be grinding away actually getting ready. This lead to the strange behavior of, say, the contacts list when there were lots of contacts — the application would appear to “freeze” for quite some time before it abruptly became responsive. Now Apple has since realised that this “glamorous approach” actually causes more problems than it causes (no way for the user to differentiate between application states; security issues), and has reverted to the boring, Symbian-style where the view draws itself as it can, usually starting with an empty list.
Another example is Google’s Web 2.0 apps. They look great, but their functionality is extraordinarily shallow. (In fact, you could say that about the iPhone, etc.)
The real shame is that the media are so facile and shallow themselves that they can’t see beyond the surface, and thus hype the products that focus on the surface and neglect the depths. That is what Symbian needs to address.
(In other words, it’s a PR problem, not a strictly technical one — though there may be some technical solutions needed in a PR fix.)
Cynical? It’s hard to be too cynical where the media is involved… 😉
Comment by Malcolm Lithgow — 9 October 2008 @ 11:28 pm
I think Malcolm has a good point about the difference in cultures between Silicon Valley and London.
In addition, I believe that this difference is strengthend by technical and marketing aspect largely outside of Symbian’s direct control: since Symbian as a platform does not have the kind of high-profile interest of, say, Android, it is largely perceived through the devices that run it.
And unfortunately the manufacturer of the majority of these devices just doesn’t have the same brand appeal in the US as it has in Europe. To make matters worse, there is still not a single Symbian device on the market that caters for the “other half” of non-GSM operators in the US.
So in addition to being less showy, developing for Symbian is also less “locally relevant” for developers in the US – it just doesn’t feel the same if none of your friends has a device even capable of running your application.
The consequence of this seems to be that for both media and software companies with a “home base” in the US, Symbian probably feels more like an obscure foreign technology “for addressing the ROW market”, perhaps a bit like the Europeans thought about iMode – it’s cool, you need to understand it if you want to be “big in Japan”, but it just isn’t for us…
In my view, this has an impact far beyond the marketshare of the US in mobile, simply because its mindshare in the technology community is dis-proportionally bigger. I suspect that this disparity is still bigger in some emerging markets, where mobile is bound to play an even more important role compared to traditional PCs, but who are simply not “agenda setters” in terms of technology…
Comment by Marcus Groeber — 10 October 2008 @ 6:29 am
I think Malcolm has a good point about the difference in cultures between Silicon Valley and London.
In addition, I believe that this difference is strengthend by technical and marketing aspect largely outside of Symbian’s direct control: since Symbian as a platform does not have the kind of high-profile interest of, say, Android, it is largely perceived through the devices that run it.
And unfortunately the manufacturer of the majority of these devices just doesn’t have the same brand appeal in the US as it has in Europe. To make matters worse, there is still not a single Symbian device on the market that caters for the “other half” of non-GSM operators in the US.
So in addition to being less showy, developing for Symbian is also less “locally relevant” for developers in the US – it just doesn’t feel the same if none of your friends has a device even capable of running your application.
The consequence of this seems to be that for both media and software companies with a “home base” in the US, Symbian probably feels more like an obscure foreign technology “for addressing the ROW market”, perhaps a bit like the Europeans thought about iMode – it’s cool, you need to understand it if you want to be “big in Japan”, but it just isn’t for us…
In my view, this has an impact far beyond the marketshare of the US in mobile, simply because its mindshare in the technology community is dis-proportionally bigger. I suspect that this disparity is still bigger in some emerging markets, where mobile is bound to play an even more important role compared to traditional PCs, but who are simply not “agenda setters” in terms of technology…
Comment by Marcus Groeber — 10 October 2008 @ 6:29 am
I don't think its a culture difference. Product speaks itself. User do marketing for you if you have really a good product. Let me explain in more detail before you react:)
In Application development there are 2 things front end and back end. Symbian has worst front-end and best back-end in the industry.
Front end can give a good feel but it is backend that can give good usability. If application has only good front end it will admire initially but may fail in long term. If application has usability it may not admire but it can become necessity in long term.
Apple knows its strenth and they exposed all GUI capabilities to developers so Ofcourse user can develop attractive applications. And with attraction market reaction is good with cool, glamorous and whatever words are used.
Developers can develop much better applications on Symbian with its back-end strength but unfortunately its back-end strength is only exposed to Device Manufacturer not to developers. Device manufacturers inserts vendorId checks in the code . So the fact is that Symbian developers can not develop applications either with good front end or with good back end.
More importantly development cost of symbian signed is more than the actual cost of application development. Also bureaucracy/procedures of symbian signed is too painful that if you develop an application in 6 months it will take another 6 months to get it symbian signed. Symbian signed in only designed to benefit operators (neither the end users nor developers).
VendorID check and Symbian signed are 2 reason that leading us to move away from Symbian even after 80% development was done. We are confident that our app could increase music sales on Nokia stores if we could bring it to market.
Where Nokia & Symbian is restricting developers with VendorID checks and symbian signed, Apple is giving more and more API to their developers.
Basically Nokia is focussing on Apps that developers can also build (competing with developers) whereby Apple/Blackberry are focussing on services that require much more funding and long term returns leaving developers to attract the mass.
Best Promising Platform is Android. Although devices are not yet in the market but looking at iPhone sales and history it won't take much time. Android has flavour of both good front end reasonable back end. Google is promising that signing procedure will be very minimal. On android even some native applications can be replaced by developers app (including phone dialer).
Leave about glamour/enthusiasm/coolness I don't think there is any business sense too to continue with Symbian. Ofcourse things may turn around if there are drastic changes in the policies. But that doesn't seems to be Nokia/Symbain way as there are some back-doors entry and unfair means even among developers. Go to link (http://discussion.forum.nokia.com/forum/showthread.php?t=145610) to see what I mean by back-door entry.
Comment by Vipin — 10 October 2008 @ 11:41 am
I don't think its a culture difference. Product speaks itself. User do marketing for you if you have really a good product. Let me explain in more detail before you react:)
In Application development there are 2 things front end and back end. Symbian has worst front-end and best back-end in the industry.
Front end can give a good feel but it is backend that can give good usability. If application has only good front end it will admire initially but may fail in long term. If application has usability it may not admire but it can become necessity in long term.
Apple knows its strenth and they exposed all GUI capabilities to developers so Ofcourse user can develop attractive applications. And with attraction market reaction is good with cool, glamorous and whatever words are used.
Developers can develop much better applications on Symbian with its back-end strength but unfortunately its back-end strength is only exposed to Device Manufacturer not to developers. Device manufacturers inserts vendorId checks in the code . So the fact is that Symbian developers can not develop applications either with good front end or with good back end.
More importantly development cost of symbian signed is more than the actual cost of application development. Also bureaucracy/procedures of symbian signed is too painful that if you develop an application in 6 months it will take another 6 months to get it symbian signed. Symbian signed in only designed to benefit operators (neither the end users nor developers).
VendorID check and Symbian signed are 2 reason that leading us to move away from Symbian even after 80% development was done. We are confident that our app could increase music sales on Nokia stores if we could bring it to market.
Where Nokia & Symbian is restricting developers with VendorID checks and symbian signed, Apple is giving more and more API to their developers.
Basically Nokia is focussing on Apps that developers can also build (competing with developers) whereby Apple/Blackberry are focussing on services that require much more funding and long term returns leaving developers to attract the mass.
Best Promising Platform is Android. Although devices are not yet in the market but looking at iPhone sales and history it won't take much time. Android has flavour of both good front end reasonable back end. Google is promising that signing procedure will be very minimal. On android even some native applications can be replaced by developers app (including phone dialer).
Leave about glamour/enthusiasm/coolness I don't think there is any business sense too to continue with Symbian. Ofcourse things may turn around if there are drastic changes in the policies. But that doesn't seems to be Nokia/Symbain way as there are some back-doors entry and unfair means even among developers. Go to link (http://discussion.forum.nokia.com/forum/showthread.php?t=145610) to see what I mean by back-door entry.
Comment by Vipin — 10 October 2008 @ 11:41 am
Hello David – I’m really glad to see you respond to this issue. With any challenge the first task is to recognise the difficulty before you can make plans to prevail. All power to you and the team. Scott
Comment by Coalface — 10 October 2008 @ 1:06 pm
Hello David – I’m really glad to see you respond to this issue. With any challenge the first task is to recognise the difficulty before you can make plans to prevail. All power to you and the team. Scott
Comment by Coalface — 10 October 2008 @ 1:06 pm
Vipin, I think I can feel your pain, having suffered under the Audio Policy APIs in S60 for the last four years or so… in my opinion, audio policy is one of the more messed-up parts of S60 (priority 80, anyone?). For me, it is clearly a case where a design mistake was made [abuse of magic numbers in “priority preference” to hide hints to audio routing, rather than making it an explicit setting of an audio channel], and then gets patched around at higher levels of the system for a long time to come.
However, in my experience the approach of having subtle VID-specific differences in the behaviour of an API is luckily an exception – I couldn’t think of any other examples in Symbian where that kind of thing happens.
Comment by Marcus Groeber — 10 October 2008 @ 9:13 pm
Vipin, I think I can feel your pain, having suffered under the Audio Policy APIs in S60 for the last four years or so… in my opinion, audio policy is one of the more messed-up parts of S60 (priority 80, anyone?). For me, it is clearly a case where a design mistake was made [abuse of magic numbers in “priority preference” to hide hints to audio routing, rather than making it an explicit setting of an audio channel], and then gets patched around at higher levels of the system for a long time to come.
However, in my experience the approach of having subtle VID-specific differences in the behaviour of an API is luckily an exception – I couldn’t think of any other examples in Symbian where that kind of thing happens.
Comment by Marcus Groeber — 10 October 2008 @ 9:13 pm
While I sympathise with Vipin, he seems to be indulging in some exaggeration. Or perhaps developing for S60 really is so much more dire than developing for UIQ? (Somehow I doubt it.)
Our experiences are a counterpoint regarding the “beauracracy” — the longest signing has taken for us was a month, and that was mostly our fault (ie. time spent fixing problems in our app that signing, legitimately, threw up). Since that first go, we’ve haven’t taken longer than a few days.
Vipin’s hopes for Android and Apple are all just that: hopes (because they relate to uncertain things in the future).
The real problem with Symbian now is the lack of promotion of it as a platform, and the lack of a good channel to market. But I’ve written about this elsewhere. That’s what I’m hoping for…
Comment by Malcolm Lithgow — 11 October 2008 @ 10:39 pm
While I sympathise with Vipin, he seems to be indulging in some exaggeration. Or perhaps developing for S60 really is so much more dire than developing for UIQ? (Somehow I doubt it.)
Our experiences are a counterpoint regarding the “beauracracy” — the longest signing has taken for us was a month, and that was mostly our fault (ie. time spent fixing problems in our app that signing, legitimately, threw up). Since that first go, we’ve haven’t taken longer than a few days.
Vipin’s hopes for Android and Apple are all just that: hopes (because they relate to uncertain things in the future).
The real problem with Symbian now is the lack of promotion of it as a platform, and the lack of a good channel to market. But I’ve written about this elsewhere. That’s what I’m hoping for…
Comment by Malcolm Lithgow — 11 October 2008 @ 10:39 pm
Hi Malcolm,
>…a lot of this difference is cultural.
>The web, and Web 2.0 especially, is very much a Silicon Valley thing. Symbian is centred in London. Californians are far more demonstrative than Londoners.
>As an Australian perhaps it is easier for me to see these cultures…
I agree that there are important cultural differences between Silicon Valley and London / Europe. I’m not looking for every Symbian developer to adopt Californian turns of expression. Far from it!
>The real shame is that the media are so facile and shallow themselves that they can't see beyond the surface, and thus hype the products that focus on the surface and neglect the depths.
I agree that the media are often facile and shallow. However, I don’t see the iPhone and Android as themselves superficial. The iPhone, in particular, has sold well, not because of what the press said about it, but because of what people experienced when they tried out using that device.
>(In other words, it's a PR problem, not a strictly technical one — though there may be some technical solutions needed in a PR fix.)
I would say it’s a problem of how users experience the products. That experience is partly conditioned by what people hear (from press, etc) but it’s significantly influenced by the devices themselves. That’s why Symbian has been working so hard to raise software quality levels, improve software performance, and enable more enchanting UIs.
Hi Marcus,
>To make matters worse, there is still not a single Symbian device on the market that caters for the "other half" of non-GSM operators in the US.
>So in addition to being less showy, developing for Symbian is also less "locally relevant" for developers in the US – it just doesn't feel the same if none of your friends has a device even capable of running your application.
>The consequence of this seems to be that for both media and software companies with a "home base" in the US, Symbian probably feels more like an obscure foreign technology "for addressing the ROW market", perhaps a bit like the Europeans thought about iMode – it's cool, you need to understand it if you want to be "big in Japan", but it just isn't for us…
Yes, this has been one of the unfortunate accidents of Symbian history. However, I am hopeful that the increased open access of the Symbian platform will lead manufacturers and operators to resurrect the latent CDMA-capabilities in the Symbian codelines and correct this long-standing omission.
Hi Vipin,
>Product speaks itself. User do marketing for you if you have really a good product.
I see a lot of truth in that. Skype is an example of when it happened.
>Symbian signed is only designed to benefit operators (neither the end users nor developers).
As one of the people who wrote the initial design documents for Symbian Signed, back in 2003, I strongly reject this view. The program was designed to benefit users and developers as well as operators.
>Where Nokia & Symbian is restricting developers with VendorID checks and symbian signed, Apple is giving more and more API to their developers.
The intention of the Symbian Signed program is to provide a path for developers to gain access to these APIs. However, I realise that developers don’t always experience it this way. That’s something that needs fixing.
>there are some back-doors entry and unfair means even among developers. Go to link to see what I mean by back-door entry.
The intention with the Symbian Foundation is to push as many processes and decisions as possible into transparency, allowing open scrutiny. That should reduce any suspicion of unfair decisions.
Hi Malcolm (again),
>The real problem with Symbian now is the lack of promotion of it as a platform, and the lack of a good channel to market. But I've written about this elsewhere. That’s what I’m hoping for…
Thanks for your comments. I like your thinking!
// dw2-0
Comment by David Wood — 11 October 2008 @ 11:26 pm
Hi Malcolm,
>…a lot of this difference is cultural.
>The web, and Web 2.0 especially, is very much a Silicon Valley thing. Symbian is centred in London. Californians are far more demonstrative than Londoners.
>As an Australian perhaps it is easier for me to see these cultures…
I agree that there are important cultural differences between Silicon Valley and London / Europe. I’m not looking for every Symbian developer to adopt Californian turns of expression. Far from it!
>The real shame is that the media are so facile and shallow themselves that they can't see beyond the surface, and thus hype the products that focus on the surface and neglect the depths.
I agree that the media are often facile and shallow. However, I don’t see the iPhone and Android as themselves superficial. The iPhone, in particular, has sold well, not because of what the press said about it, but because of what people experienced when they tried out using that device.
>(In other words, it's a PR problem, not a strictly technical one — though there may be some technical solutions needed in a PR fix.)
I would say it’s a problem of how users experience the products. That experience is partly conditioned by what people hear (from press, etc) but it’s significantly influenced by the devices themselves. That’s why Symbian has been working so hard to raise software quality levels, improve software performance, and enable more enchanting UIs.
Hi Marcus,
>To make matters worse, there is still not a single Symbian device on the market that caters for the "other half" of non-GSM operators in the US.
>So in addition to being less showy, developing for Symbian is also less "locally relevant" for developers in the US – it just doesn't feel the same if none of your friends has a device even capable of running your application.
>The consequence of this seems to be that for both media and software companies with a "home base" in the US, Symbian probably feels more like an obscure foreign technology "for addressing the ROW market", perhaps a bit like the Europeans thought about iMode – it's cool, you need to understand it if you want to be "big in Japan", but it just isn't for us…
Yes, this has been one of the unfortunate accidents of Symbian history. However, I am hopeful that the increased open access of the Symbian platform will lead manufacturers and operators to resurrect the latent CDMA-capabilities in the Symbian codelines and correct this long-standing omission.
Hi Vipin,
>Product speaks itself. User do marketing for you if you have really a good product.
I see a lot of truth in that. Skype is an example of when it happened.
>Symbian signed is only designed to benefit operators (neither the end users nor developers).
As one of the people who wrote the initial design documents for Symbian Signed, back in 2003, I strongly reject this view. The program was designed to benefit users and developers as well as operators.
>Where Nokia & Symbian is restricting developers with VendorID checks and symbian signed, Apple is giving more and more API to their developers.
The intention of the Symbian Signed program is to provide a path for developers to gain access to these APIs. However, I realise that developers don’t always experience it this way. That’s something that needs fixing.
>there are some back-doors entry and unfair means even among developers. Go to link to see what I mean by back-door entry.
The intention with the Symbian Foundation is to push as many processes and decisions as possible into transparency, allowing open scrutiny. That should reduce any suspicion of unfair decisions.
Hi Malcolm (again),
>The real problem with Symbian now is the lack of promotion of it as a platform, and the lack of a good channel to market. But I've written about this elsewhere. That’s what I’m hoping for…
Thanks for your comments. I like your thinking!
// dw2-0
Comment by David Wood — 11 October 2008 @ 11:26 pm
Marcus,
Thanks for understanding the basic issue.
Malcolm,
>>he seems to be indulging in some exaggeration.
May be I am, but the fact is that Symbiansigned documents are not updated for ages and we needed to go to forums to find the answers that may take 3-4 days to get to right information that should be available in document. All these costs delays. If you want I can give several examples.
David,
>>The intention with the Symbian Foundation is to push as many processes and decisions as possible into transparency, allowing open scrutiny. That should reduce any suspicion of unfair decisions.
Transparency should be in the roots, it should not require a foundation to be formed.
Comment by Vipin — 12 October 2008 @ 4:25 pm
Marcus,
Thanks for understanding the basic issue.
Malcolm,
>>he seems to be indulging in some exaggeration.
May be I am, but the fact is that Symbiansigned documents are not updated for ages and we needed to go to forums to find the answers that may take 3-4 days to get to right information that should be available in document. All these costs delays. If you want I can give several examples.
David,
>>The intention with the Symbian Foundation is to push as many processes and decisions as possible into transparency, allowing open scrutiny. That should reduce any suspicion of unfair decisions.
Transparency should be in the roots, it should not require a foundation to be formed.
Comment by Vipin — 12 October 2008 @ 4:25 pm