Symbian Operating System, Now Open Source and Free

The source code for the ten-year old Symbian platform will be completely open source and available for free starting Thursday. The transition from proprietary code to open source is the largest in software history, claims the Symbian Foundation.

“The dominant operating system provider out there is Symbian,” says Lee Williams, executive director of the Symbian Foundation, “and now we are offering developers the ability to do so much more.”

Symbian, which powers most of Nokia’s phones, has been shipped in more than 330 million devices worldwide. But in the last few years, Symbian has seen more than its fair share of changes. In 2008, Nokia, one of Symbian’s largest customers, acquired a major share in the company. Nokia then created the Symbian Foundation to distribute the platform as an open source project, and began the process of opening up the source code that year.

Meanwhile, the operating system has seen new rivals crop up. Google’s Android, which is based on a Linux kernel, has become a favorite among handset makers such as Motorola and HTC. And it’s based on an open source foundation too.

Symbian’s move to open source has been completed four months ahead of schedule and it offers mobile developers new ways to innovate, says Williams. Any individual or organization can now take, use and modify the Symbian code for any device, from mobile phone to a tablet.

Similar as it may sound to Android’s promise, there are major differences, says Williams.

“About a third of the Android code base is open and nothing more,” says Williams. “And what is open is a collection of middleware. Everything else is closed or proprietary.”

Symbian is also ahead of Android in that it will publish its platform roadmap and planned features up to 2011, he says. And anyone can influence that roadmap or contribute to new features.

“Open source is also about open governance,” says Williams. “It’s about letting someone other than one control point guide the feature set and the asset base.”

But will that be enough for Symbian to steal away customers lured by a snazzier and younger rival?

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