The platform includes the OS itself but also things developed by individual members of the Foundation, including the user interfaces. In fact the source code should be up for download from the Symbian Foundation website starting 14:00 GMT today. This will leave room for a lot more contributors - now that the Symbian code is available for anyone. Nokia has been the primary developer in Symbian, but plans to reduce their input to less than 50% by the second half of 2011. The Symbian Foundation includes Nokia, LG, Motorola, NTT Docomo, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, operators Vodafone and AT&T and chipmaker Texas Instruments. And evolution it needs - with the likes of the iPhone and Google's Android OS, which is also open source, exploding into popularity.
The Foundation claims this is the largest transition to open source ever and believes it will help speed up the evolution of the platform. Symbian OS is still the most popular smartphone operating system with 330 million units shipped only last year. And the Foundation has big plans for the future.
This move began in June 2008, when Nokia bought Symbian and created the Symbian Foundation to take over the development of the OS. There have been quite a few rumors about the fate of Symbian, but now the OS has entered a new stage of its existence - its code is now open source.
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