Open source development experts Collabora Ltd. and world leader in mobile technology Nokia have joined forces to develop Telepathy, a real time communication framework.
The collaboration between the two companies has already yielded an active open source community around the framework, and Telepathy is the foundation of the Google Talk-compatible Voice Over IP/instant messaging functionality of the 2006 edition of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet.
"When we started out on our tasks to bring VoIP and IM to the 770, we first looked around in the open source world to see if anyone out there was looking to solve the same issues that we faced with our platform. After meeting with the people from Collabora and discussing their plans, it became clear that their ideas for an open source Instant Messaging and VoIP framework were an ideal match for our requirements. From this initial conception, the Open Source Telepathy project was founded, developed and a community fostered by Collabora Ltd. The framework solves all major issues of flexibility and scalability, providing a robust platform for third-party extendability in the future..” says, Nokia R&D Manager, Yannick Pellet.
"Nokia has emerged as a spearhead of Open Source development on embedded Linux. Working with them provided a unique opportunity for us to show how a solution to a client's specific problems could also be the basis of a vibrant Open Source community project.", says Collabora Ltd. CEO Rob Taylor.
“Telepathy is a tribute to the speed and quality of development that can be achieved when the proprietary and open source world work hand in hand towards the same goals. Open Source development, spot-on design and competence has allowed us to achieve a small development miracle", Yannick Pellet says.
“Many of the issues we have solved for Nokia with the Telepathy framework are also issues faced on Linux desktop system. By designing a unified solution, we enable Nokia to benefit from the work of many people and guarantee them a long-lived platform.  ” confirms Collabora Ltd. CTO Robert McQueen.
The results of this collaboration have been continuously fed to the Open Source community and merged into the Telepathy project under the GNU LGPL license.