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2010-02-04 13:18:00
By Jonathan Fildes
Technology reporter, BBC News
The group behind the world's most popular smartphone operating system - Symbian
- is giving away "billions of dollars" worth of code for free.
The Symbian Foundation's announced that it would make its code open source in
2008 and has now completed the move.
It means that any organisation or individual can now use and modify the
platform's underlying source code "for any purpose".
Symbian has shipped in more than 330m mobile phones, the foundation says.
It believes the move will attract new developers to work on the system and help
speed up the pace of improvements.
"This is the largest open source migration effort ever," Lee Williams of the
Symbian Foundation told BBC News.
"It will increase rate of evolution and increase the rate of innovation of the
platform."
Ian Fogg, principal analyst at Forrester research, said the move was about
Symbian "transitioning from one business model to another" as well as trying to
gain "momentum and mindshare" for software that had been overshadowed by the
release of Apple's iPhone and Google Android operating system.
Evolutionary barrier
Finnish mobile phone giant Nokia bought the software in 2008 and helped
establish the non-profit Symbian Foundation to oversee its development and
transition to open source.
The foundation includes Nokia, AT&T, LG, Motorola, NTT Docomo, Samsung, Sony
Ericsson, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone.
It's useful for them to say Symbian is now open - Google has done very well
out of that
Ian Fogg
The group has now released what it calls the Symbian platform as open source
code. This platform unites different elements of the Symbian operating system
as well as components - in particular, user interfaces - developed by
individual members.
Until now, Symbian's source code was only open to members of the organisation.
It can be downloaded from the foundation's website from 1400 GMT.
Mr Williams said that one of the motivations for the move was to speed up the
rate at which the 10-year-old platform evolved.
"When we chatted to companies who develop third party applications, we found
people would spend up to nine months just trying to navigate the intellectual
property," he said.
"That was really hindering the rate of progress."
Opening up the platform would also improve security, he added.
'Mind share'
Symbian development is currently dominated by Nokia, but the foundation hoped
to reduce the firm's input to "no more than 50%" by the middle of 2011, said Mr
Williams.
"We will see a dramatic shift in terms of who is contributing to the platform."
However, said Mr Williams, the foundation would monitor phones using the
platform to ensure that they met with minimum standards.
Despite being the world's most popular smart phone operating system, Symbian
has been losing the publicity battle, with Google's Android operating system
and Apple's iPhone dominating recent headlines.
"Symbian desperately needs to regain mindshare at the moment," said Mr Fogg.
"It's useful for them to say Symbian is now open - Google has done very well
out of that."
He also said that the software "may not be as open and free as an outsider
might think".
"Almost all of the open source operating systems on mobile phones - Nokia's
Maemo, Google's Android - typically have proprietary software in them."
For example, Android incorporates Google's e-mail system Gmail.
But Mr Williams denied the move to open source was a marketing move.
"The ideas we are executing ideas came 12-18 months before Android and before
the launch of the original iPhone," Mr Williams told BBC News.