Who: The Symbian Foundation, together with its ecosystem, is creating the most proven, open and complete mobile software platform.
The platform is based on Symbian OS and software assets contributed by Nokia, NTT DOCOMO, and Sony Ericsson, including the S60 and MOAP(S) user interfaces. Symbian OS is the leading open mobile operating system, and has shipped in more than 250 million mobile devices to date.
Portions of the platform's source code have already been moved to open source, under the Eclipse Public License. By mid-2010 this process will be complete, making the platform code available to all for free, and bringing additional innovation and engaging an even broader community in future developments. The role of the foundation, which acts as a meritocracy, is to promote collaboration, contributions and active participation in the platform and community.
What: Symbian Foundation is today announcing the addition of two seasoned, senior executives to its management team: Larry Berkin, former vice president, Mobile Ecosystem & Corporate Business Development at ACCESS (formerly PalmSource) and Dietmar Tallroth, former Director of Legal for Nokia's Open Source and Java.
Larry will now serve as head of Symbian's US office and will be charged with expanding its partnership alliances and developer ecosystem. Dietmar will serve as Symbian's general counsel and will be based in Finland.
Both Larry and Dietmar join a burgeoning team of newly hired talents, including:
* Robert Ackland, formerly of Panasonic and Motorola, now Technology Manager for Application and UI layer technologies
* Paul Beusterien, formerly Director, CTO Projects at Wind River, joins as Team Lead for Tools
* Richard Collins, formerly of Orange, The Cloud, and Vodafone, joins the Connectivity Technology Management team
* Oliver Gunasekara, formerly of ARM, joins the Alliance Management team
* Daniel Rubio, formerly of Sendo, NEC and Motorola, will serve as Chief Architect and chair of the Symbian Architecture Council
* Lauren Sarno, formerly of ARM's marketing communications group, has joined the Member Programs Team
* Bill Washburn, formerly Executive Director of the OpenID Foundation, joins as Companies Community Manager
* Scott Weiss, formerly of Human Factors International and Usable Products Company, is now UI Technology Manager
When: Larry Berkin begins working on behalf of Symbian Foundation on Monday, June 1st. Dietmar recently began working for the foundation.
Why: According to Symbian Foundation's Executive Director, Lee Williams, "Symbian is strengthening its executive team with talented individuals, including Larry and Dietmar, both very experienced, passionate and already well-entrenched in the open source movement. Their contributions will enable the foundation to continue its efforts towards growing a thriving ecosystem, comprising a strong network of developers, partners, manufacturers and operators, around the Symbian platform."