Published by Rafe Blandford at 19:58 UTC, December 17th 2010
As part of the Symbian Foundation's transition to a licensing only organisation the majority of the Symbian Foundation websites closed today. Together with the departure of the majority of the remaining staff, today marks the end of major operations by the Symbian Foundation. Of course, the Symbian platform will continue under the guidance of Nokia, who have committed to make the future development of the platform available via an alternative 'direct and open model'. Some comments below.
While the main Symbian Foundation websites have now closed, the transition team will be making key data available via an FTP site. It will include current platform source code, platform development kits, documentation (HTML source) and a number of databases (Bugzilla, Wiki, Forums, Ideas, Symbian Horizon). You can request access to the FTP site by emailing contact@symbian.org. The FTP site will be available until March 31st 2011.
Additionally, the Symbian Foundation blog will be retained as a communication channel during the transition period.
In today's blog post, the Symbian Foundation thanks everyone who has contributed to the platform and notes some of the major milestones achieved:
We would like to extend our deepest thanks to everyone who contributed to the major milestones achieved at the Symbian Foundation. We can all be proud of these accomplishments – some not seen before in the history of computing, such as the completion of the largest transition to open source of any commercial codebase in software history. We would also like to extend warm thanks to the entire member community for their continued commitment to the Symbian platform.
Today was the last day of work for the majority of the remaining Symbian Foundation staff. We wish them all well in their future endeavours. A small transition team remains in place to help oversee and facilitate the final stages of the transition process.
However, it is important to realise there is a distinction between the Symbian Foundation and the Symbian Platform. While the Symbian Foundation is being wound down, the Symbian platform is starting a new chapter in its history. Nokia remains fully committed to the platform and Symbian remains its primary open platform.
Nokia plans to make the platform source code for future versions of the platform available to the Symbian business and technology ecosystem. The exact process for this has not yet been disclosed, but Nokia say they plan to use a 'similarly open license' [to the existing EPL license]. Nokia expects to make a series of announcements in the first quarter of next year.
We plan to make the platform source code of for future incrementally improved Symbian releases available to the Symbian technology and business ecosystem. You will be able to find the platform code and details of licensing arrangements through these pages during Q1 of 2011. Until then, the Symbian Foundation will deliver historical information and the existing open source platform code via an FTP server until March 31, 2011.
During the first quarter of 2011, Nokia will review the existing platform documentation, wiki content, and platform development tools and publish relevant ones through this website.
You can follow Nokia's plans for the Symbian platform on their Symbian blog.
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