The launch of the EKA2 kernel is said to be nine months ahead of schedule, which "reflects the positive momentum behind Symbian's ambitious platform migration plan, which began with the release of security code under EPL."

The kernel is at the heart of the Symbian platform, managing all system resources and frameworks necessary to run the system.

Symbian stresses the Foundation is providing the complete development kit free of charge.

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 company adds.

"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.

To enable the community to fully utilize the open source kernel, Symbian is providing a complete development kit, free of charge, including ARM's high performance RVCT compiler toolchain.

The development kit comprises ARM's high performance RVCT compiler toolchain; the open source kernel and other complementary packages; open source simulation environment based on QEMU and support package for the low cost Beagle Board; supporting binaries and hardware execution environment

Separately, Symbian Foundation catalyst and futurist David Wood has announced he is leaving the initiative after more than two decades of involvement with the Symbian operating system in its different incarnations.

Wood posted on his blog that : "In many ways, my time in the Symbian Foundation has been a natural extension of a 20 year career with what we now call Symbian platform software (and its 16-bit predecessor): 10 years with PDA manufacturer Psion followed by 10 years on the Leadership Team of Symbian Ltd., prior to the launch of the Symbian Foundation.

"In summary, I've spent 21 hectic years envisioning, architecting, implementing, supporting, and avidly using smart mobile devices."

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