We knew it was coming, just not yet. However, the source code for the Symbian platform is now fully open source, meaning that anyone will be able to modify it, develop it, and use it for any purpose.
The Symbian Foundation which consists of Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, and Vodafone, as well as others, originally intended to make the code available in June 2010 but have speeded up the process to release it four months ahead of schedule.
In case you don’t know, Symbian is the world’s most popular operating system for SmartPhones with around 330 million Symbian based devices in use.
Mobile phone giant Nokia bought the Symbian software a couple of years ago and set up the Symbian Foundation to help develop it.
By releasing the source code into the wild they are hoping to attract new developers and speed up the rate of progress.
“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.
“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.”
Some are wondering whether the decision to release Symbian has anything to do with the rising popularity of Android, Google’s open source operating system and the dominance of the Apple iPhone on the market.
However that isn’t the case according to Mr Williams. He said that the ideas they are executing now originally came 12 to 18 month before Android appeared and before the original iPhone was launched.
The Symbian website makes it pretty clear what they are about. “We’re a community, not a company, owned by members not any one entity” it says on the Symbian site home page.
“A coming together of those who consider, discuss, design, develop, and so create, an operating system for mobile devices.
“Anyone, anywhere can be part of this New World. Help to create the future of mobile”
So the invitation is there for anyone who is interested.
The Symbian code is now available for download from the Symbian developer site.
