SyncML 1.0 released; MAL Is Dead.

A reader Coward writes: "Finally, there's a standard for sync. SyncML 1.0 was just released. Which also means MAL is pretty much history." Yeah, getting Motorola, Nokia, Ericcson, Palm and about 600 other companies is probably a good move. If it means I can beam sync calender/number information from my Palm to my phone, I'll be a happy man.

Comments

Re:it's about time!

[Anonymous Coward]

At first glance, this looks great. However, having downloaded the specification, I am somewhat troubled by this bit of legalese:

<snip>
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) Ericsson, IBM, Lotus, Matsushita Communication Industrial Co., LTD,
Motorola, Nokia, Palm, Inc., Psion, Starfish Software (2000).
All Rights Reserved.
Implementation of all or part of any Specification may require licenses under third party
intellectual property rights, including without limitation, patent rights (such a third party may
or may not be a Supporter). The Sponsors of the Specification are not responsible and shall
not be held responsible in any manner for identifying or failing to identify any or all such
third party intellectual property rights.
</snip>

What's this? The sponsors of the specification "may" have various patents and copyrights making it impossible (or illegal, which isn't the same of course) to implement the specification without paying them money? And they don't even have to tell us about them (until it's too late)?! And I hoped this was going to be an open standard...

Will this present a major hurdle for Linux developers trying to implement the standard so we can use our PDAs and such with a Linux box? I think it looks pretty likely.

Sync, but where is MS

[cluge]

With MS being so prevasive in the desktop I would assume that MS would want to be a part of this. After all I'd love to sync my Ipaq address book with outlook AND my Cell Phone. The thing is MS already can sych with Palm Devices that it deems "good" (i.e. WinCE) And it leaves other "syching" up to third parties.

I noticed Avant Go was mentioned in the article. The Avant Go system is a perfect example of a 3rd party coming and and developing a something for a MS product because it was lacking that ability (Avant go allows you to sync across the network and through the web!)

Since MS, who has openly announced they are "going after" the embedded market is conspicuously absent I predict the following.

• The sych will start to catch on and more and more people will develop nice applications for it
• MS will decalare that the standard synch model is too limiting for it's products and introduce it's own standard
• The new standard is based on "MS XML" and the sych software runs ONLY on win2k software
• The new software is 100% compatible with MS office (i.e. outlook) any third party patches to use the standard sych will stop working after you install the latest service pack

MS absence smells bad in this context. I only hope that enough people have adopted the protocol and it's use is so ingrained that MS will have to come along. A good example of where MS had to tow the standards line is the netowrk protocol TCP/IP, if MS had had it's way, we would ALL use NETBEUI :)

On that same note I still find it oddly funny that TCP/IP is under Microsoft as a manufacturer when you add TCP/IP to any MS machine. Almost like they invented it (sub liminal associtation?)