Nokia and Intel have announced a new strategic partnership for mobile development. This is big news for open source, since both Intel and Nokia rely on Linux (and open source) for their respective mobile platforms.

"Linux is the launching pad you need to stand on to be productive," said Nokia's open source director, Ari Jaaksi, at LinuxWorld Wednesday. "We have never managed to bring out a product in such a short time, with so few resources," he added, referring to Nokia's Linux-based Internet tablets.

Check out Nokia’s point of view on What Mobile Users Need and How Open Source Can Help, in the words of Ari Jaaksi. Building upstream following community rules is in the heart of this plan. This is what Nokia has been doing, learning and contributing back a lot. Now it’s time to dive deeper.

Nokia, the new steward of Qt, and Linux kernel contributor, says it has has completed the largest transition from proprietary code to open source in software history.

Nokia announced a home automation system based on the open source OpenWrt Linux distribution. Due in late 2009, the Z-wave wireless radio-equipped Nokia Home Control Center will let users remotely control security, automation, and energy management applications via their mobile phones, says Nokia.

Why server downtimes and flame wars seem to start always on Friday afternoon? As you probably know, this time the well-intentioned Ari Jaaksi got slashdotted and a new wave of discussion around Nokia and its open source involvement began.

At the same time "both Nokia and Intel were working on separate handset UIs using Qt, the former proprietary, the latter open-source. A better worked example of squandering your leadership role and wrestling yourself to the ground is hard to see."

"... 'The new Nokia is a company that wants to sell you a mobile device that you’ll use to purchase lots of music and other forthcoming content (N-Gage games) and lock you into their portals and services (navigation subscriptions). The device is only a means to an end, and giving customers choices by making the devices open limits Nokia’s future revenue.' ..."

A Mozilla-based web browser is available for Nokia's Linux-based N800 Internet tablet. The "MicroB" browser was released last night, by the Nokia-sponsored Maemo community that maintains open source software stacks for Nokia's tablets.