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Quoting without permission Rob Landley:
http://lists.celinuxforum.org/...

"I'm sorry, I'm confused by the CONCEPT of having a shortage of TODO items.
This is just the top of my head _Linux_ stuff, and doesn't include purely-me
items like learning LUA. I want to get a mac and learn THAT stuff. I want to
get my master's degree so I can become a full-time college professor when I'm
ready to retire from programming. I want to write multiple books. I want to
start a third convention so I have an excuse to wave the Cartoon Guide to
Federal Spectrum Policy at people
(http://www.newamerica.net/files/archive/Pub_File_1555_1.pdf). I want to learn
to draw so I can start a webcomic. I have enormous stacks of books to read.
I need to watch the rest of Mythbusters, catch up on the new Dr. Who, and play
Dragon Age. I want to garden and cook and bike and swim. I want to get rich
and start the world's largest nudist resort. I want to dig up the recording
of the time I got Neil Gaiman to say "By Grabthar's hammer, you shall be
avenged" into a microphone (after his reading of Crazy Hair at Penguicon 2)
and also get Ralph Nader to say "Luke, I am your Father" into another
microphone. I need to completely redo my website (and make a "random cool
stuff" page listing http://sidhefaer.livejournal.c... and
http://theglen.livejournal.com... and so on...)

Theres... a shortage of stuff to do somewhere?

Really?

How does that work?
"

...the CE company I work for does use GPL code, only just GPLV2. We heavily invest in Linux too.

And given that releases are roughly every 3 months, it exceeds 10,000 commits per minor release.

Source

[Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim] Zemlin says the Linux Foundation wants to build a collaborative forum where Linux users can share ideas and get information on the Linux operating system.

Great, but do we really need a new linux forum?

I admit I haven't checked this recently but isn't DSL using squashfs which is a compressed filesystem? If so that 50Mbytes is going to have to be uncompressed and that's going to take up precious time in that one second boot...

Panasonic as well as several other Jap CE producers maintain their own distribution for such embedded products. It is all done under roof of CE Linux Forum. Probably you can Google for more info.

Last time I read, their goal was not to fork and to distance themselves from the development - but to simplify communication with Linux community.

Chances are good that recent Linux kernels do support embedded device in your TV without extra patches.

Hi,

If you think SELinux is too much/heavy for you, you might be interested in TOMOYO Linux. I'm so sure that most of you never heard of "TOMOYO Linux", so I'll explain briefly. "TOMOYO Linux is a project started and actively maintained by the Japanese SI company, NTT DATA CORPORATION to provide a Mandatory Access Controls mechanism in Linux."

In short, TOMOYO Linux is quite similar to AppArmor and has been available at SourceForge.jp under GPL license since Nov. 2005.

TOMOYO Linux Project

The project has a pleny of documentation but most of them are written in Japanese. I have some links.

• Japan Technical Jamboree12
• SourceForge.jp: Project Info - TOMOYO
• Papers

If you happen to have a chance to attend CELF Embedded Linux Conference 2007 (April 17th-19th , San Jose), you'll be able to see presentation and tutorial.

Abstract:

Linux has been adopted more and more by embedded devices. But its poor access control model raises critical security problems. Unlike PCs, it is difficult to apply security patches to embedded devices. Thus, embedded devices should be designed with due consideration for imperative access control. Linux kernel 2.6 has been equipped with LSM (Linux Security Modules, OS level security framework) to provide MAC (Mandatory Access Control, imperative access control) ability. NSA's SELinux (Security-Enhanced Linux, LSM applicant security server) provides very fine-grained access control, but its requirements for embedded devices seem to be too excessive. LIDS (Linux Intrusion Detection System), on the other hand, is relatively compact and better suits embedded systems. However its access control granularity is rather sparse. There are many limitations which are specific to embedded devices. For example, slow CPU speed, storage capacity for OS and programs, filesystem that doesn't support xattr (extended attributes), hard-links and symbolic links used for busybox (multi-call binary to save space), files dynamically created on volatile filesystem. TOMOYO Linux (http://tomoyo.sourceforge.jp/index.html.en) is yet another way to provide a lightweight and manageable MAC ability. It is available under GPL and applicable to and suitable for both PCs and embedded devices. In this session, we will present an overview of TOMOYO Linux and explain why TOMOYO Linux is suitable for embedded devices. We will also show some demonstrations.

You should have stopped with your last comment - you've gone beyond stupid now.

You cannot report bugs to the kernel team if your kernel includes third party code

Dumb. They're not third party drivers they're included in the main kernel tree. The rest of your little rant their is based on that first, incorrect presumption.

It is an absolute fallacy that open source automatically means it is being audited by....

Dumb straw man. I didn't say open source automatically gets audited - I said the linux kernel is audited.

And it is. There's the sparse kernel auditing project, the coverity people are doing a free, ongoing audit, the ongoing LKAP (linux kernel auditting project), I could go on and on.

The openness or closedness of code has no bearing on the capacity for an audit.

Beyond stupid. Open code can be independantly audited. Closed code cannot. Do you even read what you write? Tell me how I can run sparse on the nvidia source code.

And I'll stick with the current best video card and driver combination available for Unix and Unix look-alikes.

I think you meant to say 'fastest' rather than 'best'. And nvidia does not release a driver for UNIX that I'm aware of.

Which just raises the question of why OSDL is putting together Yet Another Industry Forum when one already exists. In particular, all of the comapnies listed as initial members in ODSDL/MLI - MontaVista, Motorola, PalmSource, Trolltech, and Wind River - are already CELF members. What do they hope to accomplish via OSDL/MLI that they couldn't address as part of CELF?

Which just raises the question of why OSDL is putting together Yet Another Industry Forum when one already exists. In particular, all of the comapnies listed as initial members in ODSDL/MLI - MontaVista, Motorola, PalmSource, Trolltech, and Wind River - are already CELF members. What do they hope to accomplish via OSDL/MLI that they couldn't address as part of CELF?

The Consumer Electronics Linux Forum (CELF), a California Non-Profit Corporation, is focused on the advancement of Linux as an open source platform for consumer electronics (CE) devices. The CELF intends to operate completely within the letter and the spirit of the open source community. The CELF is a place to come and discuss various issues that are of particular importance to the CE industry. Through an open process, the CELF members will clarify and codify certain requirements to be addressed in open source software. Thereafter, the CELF will evaluate any open source submissions as to their effectiveness and responsiveness to the requirements. Open source submissions accepted by the CELF Architecture Group and Steering Committee will be incorporated into the CELF source tree, which itself is open to the public.

There's some interesting stuff coming out of CELF, if you're interested in that sort of thing. IIRC, Matt Mackall (the author of the linux tiny set of patches) is now working for CELF. From other CELF members I've talked to, I can say that they seem to be a pretty techically oriented bunch. The individual CELF members aren't marketing types trying to push OSS developers to do their work for them, they're developers who have a real interest in pitching in and helping to make Linux a useful OS for consumer electronics.

Or is it the tools, this CELF of which they speak?

Consumer Electronics Linux Forum (CELF) (currently down)

All the major consumer electronics comanies are members of CELF.

I think it has less to do with lowering costs; I hear WinCE licenses are quite low these days. It probably has more to do with not wanting to rely on a sole software supplier who may eventually become a direct competitor. If NTT DoCoMo relied on M$ SmartPhones, who's to say those phones won't tend to work better with M$N Japan vs NTT's own OCN ISP? Another example is the M$ XBox directly competing with the Sony PS/2. It should be no surprise that Sony was one of the founding members of CELF:
http://www.celinuxforum.org/

Ummm...Tjis consortium could be cooperate with this.

Hey Nokia: remember that you are from Finland ;-)

<Company or individual name> submits this input to CE Linux Forum WG XXX (the "Contribution") to the CE Linux Forum for use by the CE Linux Forum and its Members for purposes of developing and promoting a Proposed Specification or Standardized Specification and for any purpose reasonably related to the CE Linux Forum. The CE Linux Forum and its Members shall have no obligation to treat the Contribution as confidential information, or to use the Contribution for any purpose, however. <Company or individual name> hereby declares and agrees to license this input under terms that satisfy the Open Source Definition, as published by the Open Source Initiative including but not limited to GNU General Public License and GNU Lesser General Public License. Further, <Company or individual name> grants to any interested Member (i) a non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, non-transferable, royalty free, worldwide license under all copyrights contained in its input, to reproduce in any form and make derivatives thereof for the sole purpose of developing, publishing, and distributing Proposed Specifications and Proposed Implementations, and (ii) a non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, non-transferable, royalty free, worldwide license under all copyrights contained in its input, to reproduce in any form for the sole purpose of publishing or distributing Standardized Specifications or Reference Implementations.

I haven't had a chance to read the whole thing, but Here are the bylaws of the orginization.

Maybe he just RTFA.

They are going to "Extend Linux." That means Open. WTF would they doing to do otherwise? Distribute pre-compiled modules for every architecture? Give me a break. Companies don't develop proprietary stuff in groups of eight. The whole point is openess.. they want interoperability with each others' products.

From the frontpage:

The CELF is a place to come and discuss various issues that are of particular importance to the CE industry. Through an open process, the CELF members will clarify and codify certain requirements to be addressed by the open source community. Thereafter, the CELF will evaluate any open source submissions as to their effectiveness and responsiveness to the requirements. Open source submissions accepted by the CELF Architecture Group and Steering Committee will be incorporated into the CELF source tree, which itself is open to the public.

Through this open process, the CELF intends to leverage the benefits of the open source community and process to maximize the re-use of common solutions to common problems and thereby create a foundation on which the CELF members and others can build compelling networked products. We welcome you to join the CELF and work with us to realize an open platform for compelling new consumer electronics products.