Nokia releases GTK+ and GStreamer based Internet tablet

Well I don't think you should see it either as a phone replacement or as a PDA. Its aimed at being a portable internet access unit and that is what the design is meant to facilitate with the big screen etc. If they had made it a phone it would have had many of the same issues as a phone which made people not to keen on the n-gage.

Think of it more as a tiny travel laptop, perfect for reading documents, email, browsing checking your online calendar and so on, when traveling without having to drag along a full laptop. Or as an extra node in your home network more suitable for using from the sofa or living room chair.

A version of Opera ported to GTK+ though :)

Nokia is responsible, in a major way, for the software patent directive debacle in the EU Council of Ministers. We all know it was very tight, and it just so happens that Nokia was the single most powerful lobbier of the Finnish government in this. Guess how they voted. Not to mention their lobbying in other countries.

So basically they seem to want to have their FOSS cake and eat it too (with sharp, pointy teeth).

(Yes, I'm aware it's a big firm with differing opinions among the guys who actually do something and the lawyers, but as long as the lawyers are allowed to roam unchecked like this, the whole simply cannot be considered a Good Guy (TM)).

While I disagree with their stance on patents in general at least that announced today that all their patents can be used in Linux, see this press release for details.

The patent license seems to be purely a PR stunt without any real substance whatsoever.

First, they don't even assert that anything is covered by their patents.

Second, they assert a right to start acting up anyway if something that is covered by their patents ends up in the kernel.

Third, even if some patented thing in Linux was covered by this license, its use is only authorized in the Linux kernel as published on kernel.org (not even vendor- or self-patched versions), which is pretty useless.

Fourth, the above condition is incompatible with GPL's clause 7. It follows that if Nokia makes a credible patent claim on something that is in the kernel, then nobody has a valid license to distribute the kernel anymore until the patent issue is sorted out in the usual manner (that is, by getting a GPL-compatible license or working around it).

To sum it up, it seems they're just trying to shine their shield after bashing some FFII heads in here in the EU.