The Symbian operating system for mobile phones will finally become open source and free, following several years as a proprietary platform, according to the Symbian Foundation. Companies and developers can now utilize Symbian for a variety of new devices, even beyond cellphones, as the code can be modified as needed.

“The dominant operating system provider out there is Symbian, and now we are offering developers the ability to do so much more,” says Lee Willians, the Symbian Foundation’s executive director, according to a Wired report.

Amid the growing popularity of Symbian’s primary rival, Google’s Android OS, the Foundation has attempted to differentiate its platform from the current alternatives. While Android updates are spearheaded by Google, with certain features unknown prior to release, the Symbian Foundation plans to publish a detailed roadmap that extends into 2011. The group also claims to allow individual developers to add new features or help steer the roadmap.

“About a third of the Android code base is open and nothing more. And what is open is a collection of middleware, everything else is closed or proprietary,” added Williams. “Open source is also about open governance, it’s about letting someone other than the one control point guide the feature set and the asset base.”

The OS code will be available for free beginning on Thursday.