Symbian Smart Phone Opens up to Open Source

The Symbian (News - Alert) Foundation reportedly will offer the full Symbian smart phone platform to open source, according to industry observer Paul Krill. The kernel has been available as open source for a while now.

 

The Symbian 3 platform, including applications, middleware, and the kernel itself, 'will be offered under terms of the Eclipse Public License and other open source licenses,' Krill said, quoting Larry Berkin, head of global alliances for the foundation as saying 'You can download it, you can modify it.'

 

Industry observer John Lister reported that 'the foundation’s executive director, Lee Williams, told the BBC that one of the main reasons for making Symbian open source was a fear that it was developing too slowly to compete with rival systems. He noted complaints from app developers that it could take as long as nine months just to sort out the intellectual property administration required to produce a legal Symbian application.'

 

'We're open-sourcing 108 packages that will be available at the source code level,' Berkin told Krill, adding that handset manufacturers can modify the code and build differentiated handsets:

'Originally due to be fully open-sourced by June, foundation members accelerated the process, said Berkin. Code, more than 40 million lines of it, will be available at this Web page at 6 a.m. Pacific time.'

 

Back in June 2008, Lister writes, 'Nokia (News - Alert) took 100 percent ownership of the company behind Symbian and set up the Symbian Foundation. The group allowed everyone from major corporations to amateur enthusiasts to join without charge,' the aim being to “enable the evolution based on one unified platform.”

 

Today 'that transition is complete,' Lister says, 'with the foundation calling it the biggest switch from proprietary code to open source in history.'

 

There are 330 million Symbian-based devices in use, according to Berkin. Krill noted that five manufacturers currently build Symbian devices: Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Fujitsu and Sharp (News - Alert).