Symbian Foundation Open Sources Microkernel

Symbian Foundation has announced that it has made the microkernel, a crucial component of Symbian OS, the world’s renowned mobile operating system, available to the open source developer community nine months before it was planned.

The Symbian development team has confirmed that it has now released the microkernel, along with the development kit, under the Eclipse Public Licensing (EPL) project.

Incidentally, the UK’s Symbian mobile operating system has seen a significant decline in its market share, primarily owing to new entrants, including Google Android and Apple, and henceforth seems to be more than interested in opening the software for developers to lure a broader range of companies and more catchy apps.

The foundation noted in a blog post that it wasn’t modifying the licence notices in the source code, but instead stitching a developer environment equipped with an ARM simulator, and creating an entirely open source base port for a rather cost-effective Beagleboard.

The microkernel from Symbian offers symmetric multiprocessing as well as multitasking, and developers can start with text shell builds by downloading a “kernel taster kit” for the purpose.

The Symbian development team is looking forward to shift their focus on to the GCC compiler and the ARM CPU’s power-saving Thum2 Technology in the future.