After Nokia’s Maemo – Linux based – open source development platform launch to create applications for Nokia Internet Tablet products, Vodafone is lauching a new new open source community portal, called Betavine. It aims to encourage collaboration in the area of mobile and internet communications.

I think this is a great idea from Vodafone to ‘open’ up to the open-source communities out there and to create more opportunities for startups and developers. Don’t forget the current business models are still within operators’ range – means you need to partner with them if you want to make some money I also believe that there is a lot of open ground for experimenting with new business models, combining existing operator controlled revenue-models with the more open-source ideas and web community building approach.

Inspired by the discussion around Web 2.0, Vodafone Betavine applies some of the principles of Web 2.0 to R&D in the mobile and Internet communications space, in particular, openness, collaboration and collective intelligence. The first phase of the site focusses on application upload and download, we hope to encourage anyone with an interest in mobile and Internet communications to share their ideas and applications with the community, to test and refine those ideas and applications.

Vodafone plans to offer student competitions, an open source zone via Vodafone Betavine Forge, and a set of development APIs to communications functionality like text and picture messaging.

General visitors to the site can see the projects, downloads and forum discussions that are happening in the Vodafone Betavine community. Registered users can access the application downloads, play with them and join in with the general discussions on the website and help shape the application development. Developers can create their own project space, describe and blog about their concept and upload applications.