Why was the Symbian Foundation founded? Here is our reasoning.

The industry faces enormous opportunities and challenges

• Smart mobile devices are becoming astonishingly powerful. With connections to increasingly sophisticated networks, they promise ever more innovative new applications and services
• Industries such as media, gaming, banking, retail, travel, health, journalism, education, data processing and government (…the list goes on) have seen the potential, and are rapidly developing new uses for mobile devices
• The increasing complexity of mobile devices makes them more difficult to manufacture and program, more difficult to use and reduces their battery life
• Open devices on open networks could endanger privacy and security

By involving more people, more of these opportunities can be addressed

• The number of smart and capable people outside an organisation always far exceeds the number on the inside
• Freely available standard programming interfaces are an important first step to involving more people - but they only go so far
• Freely available source code, that is open to modification and experiment, enables deeper and more substantial collaboration: collaboration in the evolution and refinement of the platform itself, rather than application development on top

The Symbian platform has a unique legacy

The Symbian platform is already a robust, cohesive, well proven, high-performance software system, whose scope covers the complete needs of mobile developers - from the metal, via extensive middleware, to applications and UIs. This stable base is an excellent starting point for further improvement.
Many key personnel within the Symbian Foundation and the founding organisations have more than a decade of Symbian experience. The Foundation has battle-hardened skills in:

• Roadmap design and execution
• Managing software interfaces, platform compatibility, and rapid integration
• Dealing simultaneously with disparate powerful customers having divergent interests
• Mixing agile and modular development with overall architectural integrity
• Overnight builds, codeline management and quality gate-keeping

The road ahead

We’ve made a strong start by opening the Symbian platform source code four months ahead of schedule, but the road ahead is likely to contain pot-holes. To help us keep our footing, the following principles will be our guidelines:

• Practice not just open source but also open decision making and open governance. In this way we can benefit from the best ideas, and retain the maximum goodwill and trust from the entire community
• Aim to build bridges and overcome divisions. We must find ways to work with potential partners who have different outlooks, motivations and business models
• Value and respect developers. It is developers who provide the creative energy and insight to craft and re-craft the products that meet end-users' needs on every level
• Seek to engage the heart as well as the head. We must ignite and sustain intelligent passion to fulfil our vision of "freedom to create"

Read the FAQs