The Symbian Foundation has announced that the mobile OS is now entirely open source, four months ahead of schedule.
All Symbian source code is now available for free under the Eclipse and other open source licenses, the Nokia-led non-profit organization announced.
The transition to open source has been the largest in software history, Symbian added.
Individuals or organizations are now free to take, use and modify the code for any purpose, the Foundation said, adding that any developer has the potential to influence they Symbian feature roadmap for 2010-11.
“It's increasingly important for smartphone platforms to offer developers something unique. The placing into open source of the world's most widely-used smartphone platform emphatically fits that bill,” IDC analyst John Delaney said.
The Symbian OS is increasingly finding its market share threatened by Android, which IDC predicts will become the number two mobile OS after Symbian by 2013. Symbian's open source push is likely an attempt to keep up with its rival.
All 108 Symbian software packages and SDKs are available at