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).

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".

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...