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Symbian Countdown Keeps Getting Lower

By The Guru on February 2, 2010

Symbian Friends

The Symbian Foundation kicked off a weird promotional campaign recently, with a cryptic countdown that started at 108. The number has since dropped to 61, 49, 48, 36, and finally 29 today. You can keep up with the countdown at http://countdown.symbian.org, and if you view the page source, they’ve changed the hint inside a few times to keep things interesting.

There has been plenty of speculation about what they’re counting down to. I originally suggested that it was 108 years before they were competitive again, though I was obviously only joking. Others have suggested that it’s the number of lines of code to be updated or open-sourced, which is likely the most realistic guesstimation.

There has not been any obvious pattern to the numbers decreasing, so it’s anyone’s guess as to when this countdown will reach zero, and what it means. What do you think? Can you find a pattern, or do you have a guess as to what they’re counting down to?

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The Guru

The Guru, aka Ricky Cadden, started Symbian-Guru.com in November 2006, out of his excitement for the S60 3rd Edition version of Symella. The Guru has used Symbian devices since the Nokia 6620, and is known for his perspective as a power user. You can follow The Guru on Twitter at @Rcadden

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  • http://twitter.com/NJaszczur NorbertJarzebowski

    http://developer.symbian.org/wiki/index.php/Pla…
    Symbian^2 should be stabilized soon, so it might be number of open bugs.
    I also saw someone decoding the numbers (don't know how) as “Unix Time” which makes sense because S^2 is supposed to be open-source.

  • doyounokia

    I believe the release of Symbian 3 source code with new interface and software.

  • SomeOne

    Might be the number of paid, full-time employees remaining before the next round of Nokia inspired layoffs?

  • Michael

    Not sure who else has noticed this as I only read symbian-guru, but the world.js script is pretty interesting. For example, load up the site countdown.symbian.org and then clear the url and type
    “javascript:cornify_add();” without the quotation marks and hit enter.
    Clicking enter again will show more images. The image url's are http://countdown.symbian.org/images/symbian_09.png where the 09 is replaced by any number from 01 to 15.

    The image shown by the javascript is based on the current unix time that the script function is run, the url generated is “http://countdown.symbian.org/world.php?r=1265162374242&url=http://countdown.symbian.org/” where 1265162374242 is the time, after 15 refreshes though a counter kicks in forcing it to be 0.

    Probably already found by other people, was pretty blatant in the code. Just didn't see any mention here.

  • hugovk

    I reckon it's the number of closed SFL-licensed packages left that need converting to the open EPL licence (Symbian Foundation call it “EPLisation”).

    There are 146 packages in total.
    http://developer.symbian.org/main/source/packag…

    Ohloh analyses the Symbian open source code. “We are currently converting from a restricted license to the Eclipse Public License, so this is just the tip of the iceberg! More repositories will be added in the next few months.”

    There's a journal from william_roberts: “Added 47 more Mercurial repositories – the next wave of conversion from the Symbian Foundation License to the Eclipse Public License”
    https://www.ohloh.net/p/symbian

    108 – 47 = 61

    “#symbiancountdown 12 ….. what will tomorrow bring?”
    http://twitter.com/Symbian/status/8588362025

    The last Symbian Foundation Architecture Council minutes (from 14th January) say EPLization is “currently proposed to be on 4th Feb”.
    http://developer.symbian.org/wiki/index.php/AC/…

    Earlier meeting minutes say: “FB queried whether the plan was to have a constant drip of packages being converted to which DR replied “the intention is to open up all packages ALL simultaneously. AC vote approving the License conversion will initiate technical preparation for converting all files under SFL to EPL.”
    http://developer.symbian.org/wiki/index.php/AC/…

    And from their November newsletter:
    “The AC is now responsible for decisions pertaining the promotion of SFL code into EPL, and in such role, the AC voted Yes for the EPLisation of the whole platform in one big push, completing one of the requirements for truly opening the platform and making it available regardless of membership.”

    So the big announcement tomorrow is going to be that all the packages have been converted from closed-source SFL licences to open source EPL licences, meaning Symbian code is now fully open source for everyone.

    And, after all, that is Symbian Foundations's current big goal.

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