The Symbian Foundation announced today that the Symbian OS is now fully open source. All source code, made up of 108 packages, are now available for free under the Eclipse license and other open-source licenses.
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.
The Symbian Foundation will also publish a detailed roadmap outlining planned features for 2010 and 2011. It also promises that anyone will be able to influence the roadmap and contribute new features.
It was just over a year ago that Nokia completed its acquisition of Symbian Limited with plans to contribute the Symbian and S60 software to the Symbian Foundation.