Symbian goes open source from JD Lasica on Vimeo . Probably few people have noticed that Symbian , the operating system that powers nearly half the world’s smartphones (compared with the iPhone’s 1.1% market share), is opening up its platform and going open source. “Being open source has made an incredible difference in how we interact with the community,” says Anatolie Papas of the Symbian Foundation. In this 5-minute video, she talks about recent changes at Symbian, the value of op