Symbian Smart Phone OS becomes Open Source

With open source technology becoming the major cry in the software world, Symbian follows suit by becoming open source, which it had promised in 2008. This step comes as a blessing for many developers who can now work on this wonderful platform and make new and innovative contribution to this wonderful technology. Today, Symbian has set a wonderful example for other successful technologies to go open source since the Symbian operating system was the world’s largest and most popular smart phone operating system.

With the power of open source in your hand, you can add or modify this wonderful smart phone operating system in any particular way you want. Moreover, this is not limited to individuals only, as cellular phone companies can now make the necessary modifications in their smart phones, which they were unable to make previously.

This journey to open source started in 2008, when Nokia, the Finnish cellular phone organization, bought this operating system and helped in creating the Symbian Foundation which itself was a non-profit foundation. This foundation helped in the transition and development of this software and eventually reaches its open source status today. Previously its source code was available only to its members but from now, you can simply download the code from the Symbian foundation’s website and add on your contribution to this wonderful operating system and its other components.

The Symbian foundation consists of renowned members including Vodafone, Texas Instruments, STMicroelectronics, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, LG, Motorola, AT&T, NTT Docomo and of course Nokia. When asked as to move behind making Symbian an open source the foundation members explained that for individual developers navigating through the technology itself took too much time to develop or modify an application. This meant that the development process for this wonderful technology was facing a huge intellectual problem, thus not allowing it to reach its potential. However, now with open source all that seems a history now.