Wireless & Mobile | 08 Feb 2010 :
The Symbian Foundation has completed the open source release of the source code for the world's most widely-used smartphone platform. The Symbian platform, which has been developed over more than 10 years and has shipped in more than 330 million devices around the world, is now completely open and the source code is available for free.
Any individual or organization can now take, use and modify the code for any purpose, whether that be for a mobile device or for something else entirely. This strategic move provides the Symbian ecosystem with greater potential for innovation, faster time-to-market and the opportunity to develop on the platform for free.
Lee Williams, executive director of the Symbian Foundation, explained the move was a bold step forward for mobile phone operating systems, "The development community is now empowered to shape the future of the mobile industry, and rapid innovation on a global scale will be the result. When the Symbian Foundation was created, we set the target of completing the open source release of the platform by mid-2010 and it's because of the extraordinary commitment and dedication from our staff and our member companies that we've reached it well ahead of schedule."
All 108 packages containing the source code of the Symbian platform can now be downloaded from Symbian's developer website under the terms of the Eclipse Public License and other open source licenses.