Symbian Foundation details demise of code sites

The Symbian Foundation has announced when its websites, carrying such data as the source code for the open-source mobile operating system, will be shut down.

According to a notice on the Symbian Foundation developer website, the sites will close on 17 December. Much of the data on these sites, such as the Eclipse-licensed source code for the Symbian^3 OS used in Nokia's latest phones, will probably be made available "in some form, most likely on a DVD or USB hard drive upon request to the Symbian Foundation", the notice's author wrote. However, preparation time means this will not happen before 31 January.

Nokia announced earlier in November that it was bringing Symbian back in-house, after two-and-a-half years of the OS being open-sourced by the Foundation's various members. The Finnish handset giant is the only manufacturer outside of Japan still using Symbian — NTT DoCoMo suppliers Fujitsu and Sharp still make phones using the partially open-sourced Symbian^2 variant. From the end of March next year, the Foundation will exist only as a licensing body.

The affected sites include: • www.symbian.org, www.symbian.org/cn, www.symbian.org/jp • developer.symbian.org, developer.symbian.org/cn, developer.symbian.org/jp, kernel.symbian.org • horizon.symbian.org • ideas.symbian.org • blog.symbian.org, blogcn.symbian.org, blogjp.symbian.org

The Symbian Foundation Twitter and Facebook accounts will probably also be shut down, the notice stated.