Symbian phone operating system goes open source

The group behind the world's most popular smartphone operating system - Symbian - is giving away "billions of dollars" worth of code for free. The Symbian Foundation's announced that it would make its code open source in 2008 and has now completed the move. It means that any organization or individual can now use and modify the platform's underlying source code "for any purpose." Symbian has shipped in more than 330m mobile phones, the foundation says. It believes the move will attract new developers to work on the system and help speed up the pace of improvements.