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Linux Announcement from Sony, Toshiba, NEC, Fujitsu
BJH writes: "This hit the newspapers in Japan this morning - Sony, Toshiba, NEC, Fujitsu, Hitachi and Mitsubishi (basically the entire electronics industry in Japan, with the notable exception of Matsushita) will be setting up the "Japan Embedded Linux Consortium" in cooperation with TurboLinux and a whole bunch of other groups to produce a version of Linux suitable for use as an embedded OS for home electronics, mobile phones, cars, industrial machinery - in fact, just about anything with a CPU. Here's a Nikkei article in Japanese (no login needed) and another one here in English (you'll need to log in for this one). This looks like it's going to be big - hold onto your hats, guys..." If anyone has found an English URL that doesn't require a login, please post it below.
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000713/tc/japan_ dc_1.html
OK, sorry for the bogus link to the Nikkei English site - I didn't know that their registration policy requires a credit-card number (!), even for a free trial.
It seems that the only English article around at the moment is here at CNNfn; they have a reasonable summary of the situation, but it's slightly different in content from the Nikkei article, so for your edification, I've included my translation of the Japanese Nikkei piece. (My comments are in italics.)
OS development collaboration for digital home electronics
23 Japanese electronic and telecommunications companies, including Toshiba, Sony and NEC, in addition to two universities, including Waseda University, have reached a basic agreement on collaborative development of an OS for controlling digital home electronics, mobile phones, car navigation systems and other products. Utilizing the rapidly-spreading free (This is "free" as in "free beer") OS, Linux, the OS will be made available to the public to use freely (This "free" is "libre"), and is expected to contribute to lower product development cost. The group will also call for participation from overseas corporations in an effort to make the OS a global de facto standard. Microsoft currently controls the world market for PC-based operating systems, but the Japanese group will join together to create a common infrastructure for an OS for next-generation information devices, such as digital home electronics, which are anticipated to undergo rapid growth in the future.
A controlling organization, the Japan Embedded Linux Consortium, will be founded on the 13th of this month. Other than Toshiba, etc., Fujitsu, Hitachi and Mitsubishi Electric will also participate. In addition to software companies such as TurboLinux and Elmic Systems, Waseda University's engineering department (Waseda is one of the top two or three private universities in Japan) and the Toyohashi University of Technology will take part.
One nuance that doesn't come through well in translation is the bit where they say the OS will be freely available - an exaggerated interpretation would be something like "the consortium is planning to be so gracious as to make the OS freely available to the public", an interesting bit of spin considering that they would have to make at least the kernel, and quite possibly much of userland, available, thanks to the GPL.
One other important point is the absence of Matsushita (and thereby National/Panasonic and Aiwa) from the consortium, which foreshadows the possibility of yet another Beta/VHS war. One has to wonder what Matsushita are going to do in reply to this (I very much doubt that they would just ignore it).