Symbian released the source of the Kernel and Hardware Services package under the open source EPL licence. You can download the source, read it, modify it, build it and run it on your PC or a reference board for free. This page contains information to help you get started.

The kernel release is nine months ahead of schedule and reflects the positive momentum behind Symbian's ambitious platform migration plan, which began with the release of security code under EPL.

16 out of a total 134 platform packages have now been released into open source since the code was first made available on the Symbian Foundation servers in April 2009.

"The release of the microkernel demonstrates three vital, guiding principles of the foundation: first, the commitment of many community members to the development of the platform - in this case, Accenture, ARM, Nokia and Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) all made contributions; second, progress in fulfilling our commitment to a complete open source release of Symbian; and third, a tangible example of providing the most advanced mobile platform in the world" said Lee Williams, Executive Director, Symbian Foundation.

"I would like to congratulate Symbian for not only making the source code of its kernel open source, but also the compiler and simulation environment,' said Andrew S. Tanenbaum, author of global bestsellers and widely regarded computer science texts including, Operating Systems: Design and Implementation and Modern Operating Systems. 'The code will be of great interest to programmers and enthusiasts of the Symbian system. It will also show many people that microkernels are widely used in important commercial environments, where both reliability and high performance are essential."

The complete kit, which can be downloaded from http://tiny.symbian.org/SymbianKernel, consists of:

- Open source kernel and other complementary packages
- High performance ARM compiler toolchain (RVCT4.0): free to developers and companies of less than 20 employees
- Open source simulation environment based on QEMU
- Open source base support package for the low cost Beagle Board
- Supporting binaries
- Hardware execution environment

Source : www.symbian.org