I have heard from a reliable source that the current versions of Symbian OS won’t be made open source. Open source will start at version Symbian OS 9.6. I guess this makes sense for several reasons…

• To be fair on companies who have already paid royalties for current versions
• To allow the Foundation to start with a new Symbian OS version
• To allow components to be replaced or removed where they depend on licensed 3rd party components
• To allow components (e.g. from UIQ and MOAP) to merged in

I also heard that while the core OS source code will be made available, access to changing the code will be limited (to foundation members?). I guess this also makes sense if there is to be some sort of control over the direction of development.

Related Articles:

• Symbian Partner Network (SPN)
• What Will Happen to UIQ?
• Symbian Foundation Comments
• Symbian Foundation

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008 at 9:34 am and is filed under Symbian, Series 60, Mobile. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.