Very occasionally, when circumstances dictate, Sneak has to make an epic journey to the Highlands to visit relatives, who live in a traditional crofter's cottage in the wilds of Morayshire. A few miles from this rustic bolt-hole is the Findhorn Foundation.

Located on the shores of the Lossie estuary, the Foundation serves as a retreat where yoghurt-knitters and tree-huggers come from around the world to recharge their psychic batteries.

Sneak was reminded of this when he read about the Symbian Foundation, the new body tasked with developing an open-source unified handset platform that will be available royalty-free to any handset maker that wishes to use it.

It seems to Sneak that the word "foundation" has become short-hand for any endeavour that seeks to promote itself as being altruistic. It's supposed to conjure up positive feelings and kind thoughts. Indeed, Sneak is convinced that if Microsoft started calling itself the Redmond Foundation, any negative feelings for the vendor that IT managers might harbour would disappear.

26 Jun 2008