I have been tossing this news around in my head for some time now, since it broke a few days back.

UPDATE 4-Nokia to buy UK's Symbian, open software for use | Markets | Markets News | Reuters

Is there reason to worry about the great big profit engine of the last 25 years: software platform development?

It seems that all major platforms with the exception of Windows are moving OpenSource. And since nobody has really figured out how to make the kind of margins that the older model of build-platform-sell-license yielded, does that mean that we are heading into a future where platforms are frozen, where investment no longer pays out, and where talent only participates to show off or to score street cred?

Worries me. Feels like the bleeding edge of software will be custom apps again, and what a fine mess that would be! The ability to innovate is commercially driven. OS is in the vast majority of cases a me-too product, not the breakthrough that is created by hard work, ingenuity and, lo and behold, heavy investment into R&D...