This is a request for all my readers, especially those who might want to start on Free Software development but they can’t find something to cut their teeth with.
As you might or might not know, I’m an half-happy user of a Nokia E61 phone (for the americans, it’s the original full version of the E62). It’s a Series 60v3 phone, running Symbian OS. Finding opensource software for it is kinda difficult, but not impossible. Writing good apps from Linux is near to impossible though, because the SDK is only available for Windows.
Now, I’ve seen the other day about PyS60, a Python interpreter for S60. It’s interesting as it seems to provide access to all the important informations, allowing to write software for S60 without the hassle of needing a full Windows system.
Even more interesting is that there is a python implementation of Jabber protocol. I was unable to find a decent S60 native Jabber client, the Java ones I found are obnoxious, and don’t even connect to GTalk here. Otherwise the other option is to use a 3rd party service to “bridge” the connection.
I currently have MSN support through the official Windows Live client, but I’m more interested in having Jabber/GTalk support on the phone, as I do use it for more professional reasons.
I don’t have time, not at the moment, to write one client myself, especially since doing that would be taking up time which I’d rather spend on stuff that matters to more people, like the ruby-elf work.
So, if there are any python coders with enough free time on their hands, and a Nokia phone for the obvious testing, I’d be quite glad to be a betatester for a PyS60 free software jabber client 🙂