02 June 2009

Symbian Foundation's Beta Dev Website
Is Now Open To All And Ready For Public Access

The official Symbian Foundation blog today announced that its invite-only BETA dev website is now open to all and ready to enter a public beta state although it is still far from final concept.

If you were part of the invitation-only beta, and you already went through the registration process, you can use the same account details here. Otherwise, you can click the “Register” button.

Community involvement is paramount to the evolution of the Symbian Foundation platform and as such several thousand friends and members of the Symbian community are being invited to feedback on the website which will launch as a public beta in this quarter.

The website includes a full developer offering which includes platform release information, council charters, wikis, forums as well as access to the SDK, code repository, tools, documentation, wiki, bugtracker and forums.

The foundation continues to receive encouraging support from companies across the industry. Since the membership programme first opened in February, 81 companies have applied for membership and are either going through the formal process or have become members, 50 of which are first time endorsers.

Members will be entitled to the following, royalty free:

• to license, modify and distribute source code
• to gain access to council meeting plans and deliverables
• to participate in Working Groups & annual member meetings
• be eligible for Board and Council seats
• to foundation support incl. branding, marketing, legal, and business development

"We’re excited to be working with our members and community friends on the public launch of our beta site - their feedback is extremely important in helping us evolve and develop our offering," said Lee. "With partners already contributing projects to the platform, members continuously showing their support, and the launch of our new beta site, we’re really excited about the next steps."

As previously announced, the foundation plans to move the foundation platform to open source in the next year. This will make the platform code available to all for free, bringing additional innovation and engaging an even broader community in future developments.

The foundation software licensing model and governance structure have been selected to secure transparency, encourage contribution and maintain platform consistency. The foundation will promote collaboration, contributions and active participation, and will operate as a meritocracy.