Symbian Foundation created by Nokia, is now free and open source for all, it was an propriety platform and was closed source for around 10 years. The transition from proprietary code to open source is the largest in software history, claims the Symbian Foundation. Symbian is one of the most widely operating system in almost large percentage of nokia devices.
This is one the biggest news for all those developers out there who were not been able to get symbian for app development. “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’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.
Symbian is also on the way of Android as it will also publish its platform roadmap and planned features up to 2011, as said. And anyone can influence that roadmap or contribute to new features as there are going to be lot more new and free apps coming from great mobile app developers who are already working on symbian and those who will start working on it now as it is free and open source
Symbian, which powers most of Nokia’s phones, has been shipped in more than 330 million devices worldwide. Meanwhile, the operating system’s new rival, 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.
Source : Wired
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