Electronic Giants Form CE Linux Forum

Adam Wern writes "Matsushita Electric Industrial, Sony Corporation, Hitachi, NEC Corporation, Royal Philips Electronics, Samsung Electronics, Sharp Corporation, and Toshiba Corporation, today announced the establishment of the CE Linux Forum. CELF will discuss and formalize requirements for extensions to Linux to meet the needs of CE products such as audio/visual products and cellular phones, etc. CELF will publish such requirements and will accept and evaluate open source solutions that support to meet the published requirements. CELF will also promote broad usage of Linux for CE products. IBM, an industry leader in Linux solutions and supporter of open standards ecosystems, is pursuing membership and plans to be an active participant in the CELF."

Comments

long awaited replacement to RS-232?

[Gizzmonic]

I like this CE Linux idea. Personally, I'm still waiting for a new alternative to the venerable RS-232. USB can't do it since it requires a computer, and Firewire is too expensive still. And yeah, there's all manner of proprietary connections out there, but you have to have a home theater that's made up entirely of one brand (and that really sucks).

Having a Linux CE (not to be confused with Windows CE =) to work with consumer electronics might be a good idea. So that if my DVD player runs Linux, my TIVO runs Linux, and my TV set runs Linux, I can automate recordings, get them to turn each other on, and that kinda stuff.

Since Linux is (relatively) free, it shouldn't take it forever to "trickle-down" into consumer-grade stuff. With a little luck, RS-232 device control will go the way of the dodo (/me kicks his old n busted Sony VTR).

Oh no!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not another mobile operating system!! Seeing as everything with an OS already has one, what's the point of finding another solution to an already solved problem?

Why not use something that already exists?

BSD/linux

[joe_bruin]

actually, a company i used to work for created linux-based CE devices. however, the userland was entirely BSD derived (mostly in crunched binaries) and proprietary closed source software. as with most other CE's, we found little use for the GNU tools in the device itself (obviously we used the gnu development toolchain).

every once in a while, some jackass tried to tell us that we're not using "linux", we're using "GNU/Linux". we'd correct him, we use "BSD/Linux".

Bringing Linux to embedded devices - already done

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhm, what's wrong with for instance the

* Sharp Zaurus
* The Phototainer (InnoPlus)

? Both run Linux just fine.

Look at the PT, for instance, almost instant boot, instant shutdown, uses only 4 MB flash and 16 MB of memory, can play a buttload of different formats, talk to the internal HDD and CF cards (or others with adapters), plays nice as a usb-storage compatible device, and has an infrared receiver for the included remote. And has TV out. And a tiny speaker and 3.5mm sound out.

Now just imagine you incorporate this device into a mediaplayer - what would be missing?

Cheers!

Read the PDF for membership?

[hrieke]

2.3 Membership fees vary by class, according to the following schedule:

Membership Class Annual Fee Founding Member $16,000
Appointed Member $12,000
Associate Member $8,000
Supporting Member $4,000
Special Supporting Member $0

Page 6 of the PDF. So my question is, where is the general hacker's community input going to be at? What about those who do a ton of hacking and development, but don't belong to any of these companies- where will that voice be found in this orginization's structure (answer: it doesn't appear in the membership charter).
There are questions that should be asked that I haven't seen being asked yet...

ding'a'ling'ling.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, the sleeping giants' alarm clocks have just gone off. I guess that nothing has any value until there's a billion dollar lawsuit over it. :)

Am I the only one that finds this a bit disturbing?
Firstly, this is a pay-to-join consortium. I assume that until you pay, you won't get to see the specs. Does this mean that the 'extensions' are going to be presented to Linus as a fait-accompli patch? How is he supposed to react to something that he doesn't like? It's one thing pissing off the odd developer, but rejecting a patch from a consortium of major keiretsu is surely going to have a bigger backlash. Maybe I'm being too pessimistic.

Secondly, they are acting as if they are the first people to have had this idea. Linux has been in several consumer eletronics devices already (Empeg & Tivo to name but two). What makes this consortium so special? What are they going to bring to the table that isn't already there?

Re:I find it interesting

[CvD]

And they're not using Linux as the webserver:

Sez Netcraft:

The site www.celinuxforum.org is running Apache/1.3.27 (Unix) FrontPage/5.0.2.2623 on Solaris 8.

Bastards... (just kidding... I think this is a great initiative!)

SCO Influenced ByLaws

[PetoskeyGuy]

There is an interesting section of their bylaws that members have to agree to in order to submit code. That should eliminate any of the ambiguity with the associated with some other submission processes. Non-members must submit to this agreement as well for their submissions to be accepted.

<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.

Footprints? A WinCE guy is curious (mildly OT)

[Embedded Geek]

Many folks have pointed out, the "CE" here stands for "Consumer Electronics," not "Comaact Edition" as in Windows CE (or, at least, that's what I've been told it means - can't seem to find it on their site). Despite that, this article got me thinking again about Embedded Linux again.

I've been using WinCE on several projects for about two years and haven't seen any footprint information on the latest flavors of embedded Linux. If anyone can spare a moment, could they let me know a ballpark estimate of the RAM and flash footprints of each of these configurations:

1. A minimal, headless Linux embedded configuration.
2. A headless configuration with basic TCP/IP functionality (FTP, telnet, ping, etc).
3. Headless configuration with basic TCP/IP and a simple web server (so I might post config or maintenence data about the target that way).
4. TCP/IP configuration with a minimal VGA/SVGA video dislay.
5. Same config but with web browsing capability.

Again, no need for exact numbers - just ballpark estimates or a pointer to a site that might have this info. I have no immediate needs for this - we're actually very happy with WinCE. I'm just curious for any future needs. Thanks.