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 develops the Symbian code base is structured and explain how anybody who wants to can get involved. Of course none of this is new, but it is easy not to see the wood for the trees.

Every open source community tends to have roles that are occupied by community members. This is also true for Symbian: in fact the roles in the Symbian community are pretty much the same as in other open source communities. However I want to explain a little more about the slight variations in Symbian and what people stand to gain by joining and contributing to such a young project.

Contributors: Let me start with the question why anybody would want to contribute to an open source project. There are really many reasons that might apply: On a personal level it may simply be interest in a code base that leads to experimentation or improvement suggestions. It may be passion about open source, or the opportunity to become part of or to lead a community. For companies it is usually a business opportunity or a business need to exert influence. In open source communities influence is earned through contribution: so companies allow their staff to spend some of their time working on an open source project in return for influence.

Often contributions start small: one may raise a bug, engage on the forums in the ideas site or help with documentation. Other contributions may start with test code, bug fixes and small features. Another route to get involved is to make an initial contribution or to start an innovation project – which is our term for an incubation project. With the code being open, anybody can see the code and can become involved.

Committers: Somebody who makes several contributions to the code over time earns the trust and respect of other contributors in the community. This is in line with the principle of meritocracy: the more you contribute the more responsibility you earn. Committers have write access to various foundation resources, such as the code lines and the landing pages. With the committer status come responsibilities – well, I would have said “with great power comes great responsibility” but that doesn’t quite fit. Responsibilities of committers include …

• To make sure that contributions that the committer accepts are of good quality, e.g. don’t break the build, the tests, have enough documentation, fit into the overall architecture, etc.
• To comply with the rules of the foundation, such as complying with the IP Guidelines and other rules that help ensure that the community can work
• To be active in the community by answering questions on mailing lists and forums
• To be a role model to others.

Today the package owner nominates committers: however we are looking to implement a model by which committers are elected – as is commonplace in open source communities.

Maximilian Odendahl is the first committer who did not work for the company owning a package. He is a committer for the Organizer package and for OpenOffice.org. When I talked to Max recently, he said that “being a committer of the Symbian Foundation has been a great honour. I’m looking forward to shaping the future of the organizer package and help the Foundation to grow.“

Package Owners are committers who lead the development of a package (which is a set of components in the code base) and are the public figure-heads of their package. In other open source communities they are called project leads and packages are called projects. Apart from the terminology, a package owner pretty much does what a project lead does.

Today all packages are led by employees of our member companies; most of them work for Nokia. This is because those companies have made a large contribution to the community by making available their code and by committing development resources to it. Giving something big to the community means you have the right to be package owner. Meritocracy again.

We have package owners from all over the world. What is really exciting is that many are still learning how to become good open source leaders. Look at how Chandradeep Gandhi is making first steps to reach out to the social media community. Some are doing quite well already: check out Chris Dudding’s excellent blog. I asked Chris what motivates him, and he answered: “It is exciting to contribute to a platform shipped in millions of devices around the world. Being part of the Symbian community allows me to interact with users of my package and understand their future needs.“

The Opportunity

Getting involved with young open source communities, such as Symbian, presents a huge opportunity. The opportunity to influence and even shape the direction of a mobile operating system. In contrast, establishing yourself in a mature community can be quite hard and daunting: the culture and direction will already largely have been set by others. Establishing yourself in a mature community is a bit like trying to become part of a circle of friends who have known each other for years vs. building a circle of friends when you go to college, where everybody is new.

Of course there needs to be motivation to get involved. I am not usually somebody who talks about marketshare, but having shipped over 330 million Symbian devices worldwide and another 100 million expected in 2010, should provide plenty of opportunities.

Getting involved is easy: you can get in touch with other contributors to a package, the package owners and committers through the mailing lists and forums and start getting involved. How to get in touch with a package is shown on the package landing pages. There are also a number of easy ways to get involved, such as helping to make the code work with a free compiler and the Wild Ducks project.