As of now, the Symbian platform is completely open source. And it is Symbian^3, the latest version of the platform, which will be soon be feature complete.
Open sourcing a market-leading product in a dynamic, growing business sector is unprecedented. Over 330 million Symbian devices have been shipped worldwide, and it is likely that a further 100 million will ship in 2010 with more than 200 million expected to ship annually from 2011 onwards.

Now the platform is free for anyone to use and to contribute to. It is not only a sophisticated software platform, It is also the focal point of a community. And a lot of the foundation’s effort going forward will be to ensure the community grows and is supported in bringing great innovations to the platform and future devices.
It is a big day for all those people who have worked on preparing the Symbian source code over the past ten months.
From Symbian’s side, the unsung heroes are Victor Palau, Tahir Mahmood, Pat Downey and Matt Davies, supported and encouraged by William Roberts; Ian Hutton who kept the communications flowing up, down and around the organization; Chris Davidson, who has been a key coordinator in the process and who has helped translate what is going on to those of us without a technical background; and Jo Stichbury, who has ensured that all the information that needs to be available is there for contributors and developers.
Outside of the foundation but very much involved: Sampo Savolainen, Mika Somero, Martin Platts, and Pia Vuorela. An additional thanks go to all the package owners who carry a key responsibility for innovation from here on.
Over the next five days we’re going to bring you a raft of information on Symbian and the platform migration. So stay tuned for the full story – background, current status, technical details, the vision for 2010 and how to join the community.
Right now, though, I want to ask for your feedback on what else you’d like to see here. Take a look around….
Navigate from http://tiny.symbian.org/open
Watch the introductory video here.
Read the FAQ on the Symbian developer site.
And take a look at some interesting facts.
We can’t cover such a huge story in one post so please tell us what more would you like to know, ask for clarifications too and we’ll respond as quickly as we can.


[...] Today’s annoucement removes the legal barriers for the community at large to contribute. The EPL license open the code to all, and the new IP policy allows individuals to contribute to the platform. [...]
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by lars_kurth: Symbian is open http://bit.ly/dkBDcv #opensymbian #symbiancountdown 0…
Brilliant news – well done everyone!
Well done Symbian, well done indeed. Congratulations!
Finally! Can’t wait to see custom builds of Symbian for legacy phones. Congrats guys.
Congrats to all and Thanks to Nokia for the support in the transition!
Finally, Symbian is free as in freedom (and as in beer)
what can i say that has not been said?
now that the OS is fully open sourced, i can t wait for the new UI!!!
great job guys. you made the impossible possible.
cheers!
- asri al-baker
Congratulations guys! Well before the deadline, hope all the work pays off!
[...] Tweets about this great post on TwittLink.com [...]
Great! I was waiting for this to happen!
[...] (^3) ist seit heute vollständig Open Source: http://bit.ly/aagtOT und http://bit.ly/dvFiKr. Zu spät, denke ich. Wegen #Android.Clemens Riedl neuer CEO von StudiVZ. Berger-de Léon geht [...]
Congrats!!
Thank you Nokia, probably now Symbian is the most habitual free operating system in the world.
Awesome news!
[...] Symbian Blog Posts relacionados:Microsoft y Nokia anuncian Office para SymbianBada reemplazará a Symbian desde [...]
[...] 5 February, 2010 02:00 Symbian Is Open « Symbian Blog. [...]
‘Heart’ful Congrats and best wishes to SyFo team , missing
David Wood sir comments on this moment of pride and happiness,
expecting a guest post or comments from him.
the most widely used software platform on the planet is now truly open
“What appears to be the end may really be a the new beginning…all the best “.
[...] to provide a quick and dirty rundown of the key differences between the software license covering Symbian’s new open OS and the GNU General Public License that’s served the Linux community for many [...]
[...] Symbian una plataforma open source y hoy por fin sucedió. A través de una publicación en su blog anunciaron que de ahora en adelante Symbian es Open Source, la publicación en el blog viene [...]
Congratulations on a job well done.
Congratulations to everyone at the Foundation, and in the extended community for a successful Open Source release!
The only problem that we have now, is that there simply isn’t enough time in the day to download and explore the entire codebase… Oh well.
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[...] Thu, 04 Feb 2010 13:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink | Symbian Foundation | Email this | Comments Tags: open, open source, OpenSource, symbian, [...]
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[...] 4, 2010 9:45 PM The announcement that the Symbian platform is now wholly open source represents a unique moment for the mobile [...]
[...] que o código do Symbian foi finalmente disponibilizado, acho que este Pinguins Móveis já pode parar de falar deste sistema não-Linux, [...]
[...] Symbian is open [...]
[...] Detalii despre acest eveniment puteti gasi pe blog-ul oficial al celor de la Symbian. [...]
[...] | Symbian Foundation | Email [...]
[...] | Symbian Foundation | Email this | Comments ArrayArrayArrayArrayArrayArray Link To This Post1. [...]
[...] פברואר 5, 2010 1:28 am עבר עלי יום עמוס, שבמהלך רובו לא הייתי בבית. זאת הסיבה היחידה שרק עכשיו אני מתפנה לדבר על החדשה הסלולרית החשובה של היום: סימביאן^3, הגרסה הבאה של מערכת ההפעלה הסלולרית המצליחה בעולם, שוחררה כולה כקוד פתוח. [...]
Congrats!
I’m trying to make sense of Symbian’s EPL vs. the GPL on my blog:
http://openattitude.com/2010/02/04/symbians-epl-versus-the-linux-gpl/
If anyone here cares to enlighten I’m all ears!
[...] mossa importante per difendersi dall’aggressività di Android e Iphone (via blog Symbian) The announcement that the Symbian platform is now wholly open source represents a unique moment for the mobile [...]
[...] por esto que Symbian ha anunciado que a partir de hoy Symbian^3 es completamente libre bajo la licencia de Eclipse [...]
Congratulations to everyone who has worked hard for this!!
Keep going!!
I’m glad that I bought a Nokia E63 phone just recently. Open Source FTW.
[...] hit the URL below to find out more: http://blog.symbian.org/2010/02/04/symbian-is-open/ This entry is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 [...]
[...] Anuncio en el Blog de Symbian [...]
[...] 17:30 2010年2月4日に英語ブログに投稿された「Symbian Is Open」の抄訳版です。 [...]
Of course what I’d *really* like to see would be a comment from Karl Fogel, Linus, someone from Android, ESR or….
*drumroll*
RMS!
Anyone thought about giving them a call for a quote?
David, did you read the press release in full? It contains quotes from both the FSF (not RMS though) and SFLC.
[...] | Symbian Foundation | Email [...]
[...] can find more information in yesterday’s announcement on the Symbian blog and the official press [...]
“Open sourcing a market-leading product in a dynamic, growing business sector is unprecedented.” — Well, there’s one precedent: Netscape.
[...] ми телефон ще е със Symbian http://blog.symbian.org/2010/02/04/symbian-is-open/ Някой да може да ми даде [...]
Hello John, What kind of shape was Netscape in when it went open source? As far as I can see from Wikipedia it had pretty much lost that market share by 1997 when IE 4 was being shipped in the Windows operating system and went open source in Jan 2008. Given that IE appeared in Windows ‘95 by 1998 we were already quite some way into the browser wars and MSFT was about to be hauled before the courts for anti-trust behaviour, signaling its dominance by that stage in browser installations.
I guess in the 2009-10 period we are all much better attuned to the free strategy. It will be fascinating to see how it plays out. I guess also looking back the bad side of that browser war was that a lot of proprietary features crept into browsers and an ethos was lost in the process.
Full credit of course to the Mozilla guys who are a model for how to make open source work.
[...] Symbian (mal wieder) Open Source [...]
This is so awesome. My next phone will definitely be a Nokia! Free and Open Source software is the best!!!!
[...] Symbian Is Open As of now, the Symbian platform is completely open source. And it is Symbian^3, the latest version of the platform, [...] [...]
[...] To start playing around with the code, check out the Symbian Foundation’s Platform Wiki/getting started guide. [...]
[...] 8, 2010 12:12 PM Now that the Symbian platform is open for everyone to see and use, I thought I would write a bit about how the community that owns and [...]
[...] a path-breaking move, Symbian announced its decision of turning Open source just couple of days back and that’s a sheer [...]
I’ve always been dreaming of Symbian OS to be a fully open-source software since the time I had my first Symbian-based phone (Nokia N-GAGE). Now that my dream has come true there is no word to describe how happy I am. I don’t know much about programming but who knows we could see a desktop-port of Symbian OS in the future?
[...] Symbian Is Open [...]
[...] 15, 2010 8:47 AM Symbian^3 has been in the news a lot in the past couple of weeks. Publication of the entire platform under fully open source licenses hit the headlines, as we made the Symbian^3 codeline available. So how is development of this [...]
[...] aware of this situation and they are trying hard to revive their 1st position. Recently they made Symbian Open Source and introduced new version of Symbian named Symbian^3 , watch its video preview and I’m sure [...]
[...] marcelobarros em 19/02/2010 Procurando por onde rodar o Symbian recém liberado com open source, deparei-me com um kit de desenvolvimento da Logic baseado no processador OMAP3430. Um pouco caro [...]
[...] 2010, mas, pelo visto, teve gente se empolgando… E o código-fonte do Symbian foi finalmente disponibilizado no último dia 4 de fevereiro de 2010 (ou seja, há pouco mais de 2 semanas). Os primeiros [...]
[...] de 2010, mas, pelo visto, teve gente se empolgando… E o código-fonte do Symbian foi finalmente disponibilizado no último dia 4 de fevereiro de 2010 (ou seja, há pouco mais de 2 semanas). Os primeiros [...]