The world’s most popular mobile OS officially becomes open source, starting today. This widely used OS which powers more than 330 million mobile phones was developed for more than 10 years and now it finally becomes available for free. Although parts of the source code in the OS was made open source in 2008, this time it is different. Now any developer can download the code, modify and use it however they want.

“The transition of this market-leading platform from proprietary code to open source is the largest in software history. The move has been completed four months ahead of schedule and provides the basis for unlimited mobile development based on innovation and openness.” In reality we all know this was expected. Considering that by 2012 Google’s Android will surpass every other mobile OS in the market, Symbian Foundation and Nokia (largest share holder of Symbian) didn’t quite have much of a choice. I would say this is a good move, but way too late. As for Nokia, probably it should spend more time on Maemo, rather than beating a dead horse.

[source: symbian.org]