A bayonet is a weapon with a worker at each end
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Symbian goes open source
MOBILE PHONE SOFTWARE outfit Symbian has finally open sourced the most popular mobile phone operating system in the world.
The Symbian Foundation's announced that it would make its code open source in 2008 and has now completed the transition. Any organisation or individual can now use and modify the platform's underlying source code "for any purpose". Symbian code is found on more than 330 million mobile phones.
Symbian hopes that the move will attract new developers to work on the system and help speed up the pace of improvements. The operating system is still the most stable on the market but it has been eclipsed in the smartphone market by the more media savvy Google and Apple.
Nokia bought the software in 2008 and helped establish the non-profit Symbian Foundation to oversee its development and transition to open source.
Google's Linux-based Android operating system for smartphones is open source and that has not done it any harm.
Until now, Symbian's source code was only open to members of the organisation. It can be downloaded from the foundation's website here. µ
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..are Nokia going to release full, buildable/installable trees for their appropriate phones (present and/or future)?
Thought not. The enthusiast/garage developer is still out in the cold, and other handset manufacturers, the only ones who can actually use Symbian Foundation releases, don't see Symbian as the future.