FOSSwire

The Chromium blog (Chromium being Google’s name for the open source project behind their Chrome browser) reports that developer builds of Google Chrome are now available for both Mac OS X and Linux.

Google Chrome has always been promised to be a cross-platform browser, right from when it was originally launched in September last year.

This is just the beginning—Google Chrome is far from done. We’re releasing this beta for Windows to start the broader discussion and hear from you as quickly as possible. We’re hard at work building versions for Mac and Linux too, and will continue to make it even faster and more robust.

However, up until today there have been no officially Google-branded Chrome releases for anything other than Windows.

Google are making it quite clear that Chrome is far from finished on the Mac and Linux platforms, strongly advising you not to use the browser unless you’re a developer, or love living on the bleeding edge.

It does seem to work pretty well actually as a browser, however. I’ve only played with it for a short time, but it seems to feel a lot snappier than Firefox on this machine. While the missing bits of functionality, such as plugins, does mean that it can’t really yet (and probably shouldn’t) become your primary browser, Chrome for Linux looks really promising as an excellent WebKit-based browser for Linux and a strong competitor for Firefox.

Right now, there are only .deb packages for x86 and x86–64 (AMD64) available, so you’ll need a Debian or Ubuntu system to run the test build. On my 64-bit Ubuntu 9.04 system it runs really well.

To download this test release, go across to the Chromium Dev Channel and scroll down to the ‘For Linux’ heading. Also do take note that the installation package will add Google’s repository to your system to automatically keep Chrome up to date.

What do you think of Google Chrome? Do we need another browser on Linux? Is Google Chrome set to be the best WebKit browser on Linux, the best browser in its own right or simply unnecessary or undesired on the platform? Have your say both in the comments and in the forums.

TechCrunch IT are reporting that Nokia has bought Symbian Ltd, the software development company famous for creating the proprietary operating system for mobile devices, Symbian OS.

The important part of this story is that Nokia plan to release the Symbian OS under the open source Eclipse Public Licence. This is obvious a great move from an open source point of view, and will truly open up the Symbian platform.

Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and NTT DOCOMO announced today their intent to unite Symbian OS(TM), S60, UIQ and MOAP(S) to create one open mobile software platform. Together with AT&T, LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone they plan to establish the Symbian Foundation to extend the appeal of this unified software platform.

I find the 'one open mobile software platform' line quite ironic, as this looks suspiciously like a direct response to the Google-backed Android project, to develop a free, open source mobile platform.

This move clearly underlines how important the mobile software space is becoming, and how the open source development model is playing a very significant role in the innovation of this upcoming technology.

I'm by no means an expert on this, but it really does now look like there are four serious competitors in the race to build a mobile device and software platform:

• Windows Mobile
• Apple iPhone*
• Android
• Symbian

Cruically, the last two of those efforts are now open source. This should prove a real-world test as to whether the advantage of the open source development model can mean it will win over the proprietary offerings.

Some healthy competition between the newly open Symbian and Android should help drive innovation, but this could also lead to unnecessary duplication of features and functionality across the two competing systems. On the flip side, if licensing issues can be addressed, there might be a good opportunity for a certain level of collaboration and cooperation between the two.

So, let the games begin.

* Apple's model is a little different, as they are again going to retain control over both hardware and software for their platform (just as they do with their Macintosh computers). Time will tell whether this hardware-specific approach or a software licensing approach will work best.