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

In other news...

[indros13]

...Nerds for Nerds has released their new CELF-Help guide to open source OS.

So punny it hurts :-)

After all...

[Black Parrot]

"CELF" is easier to pronounce than "CEGnu/LF"...

Oh no!

[Shishio]

Electronic giants? They're going to enslave us all! Run, run everybody!

Oh, not real giants? Oh OK. Nevermind.

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).

Re:long awaited replacement to RS-232?

[drinkypoo]

I2C is an alternative to RS-232. Actually, it's an alternative to RS-422. SMBus has some usefulness as well but I2C, I think, is closer to "where it's at".

Re:long awaited replacement to RS-232?

[Osty]

You said

USB can't do it since it requires a computer

but then you also said

Having a Linux CE ... to work with consumer electronics might be a good idea.

If your device is capable of running Linux, it's capable of controlling a USB port. Why, then, wouldn't USB be a useful connection type?

Re: Gates was right

[Black Parrot]

> Yup, Linux is just a non-threatening, passing obstacle along the road to complete IT domination by Microsoft.

"There'll never be more than 640K Linux installations."

I find it interesting

[Kardax]

...that they're using FrontPage to make a website promoting Linux...

-Kardax

And of course..

[Anonymous Coward]

The CE Linux Forum site was built with Frontpage 5.0 and hosted on IIS. Pay no mind to the man behind the curtain, Dorothy.

Interop

[chmilar]

I can see some advantages to this:

• Consumer Electronics devices are becoming more powerful. It will be nice to use Open Standards to make them interoperate with each other.
  
  
• Using Linux make these devices more "hackable" (like TiVo).
  

Unfortunately, the demands of content providers (including Sony) for Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) might make openness and iteroperability disappear. If there is a common platform for DRM, the devices are more likely to play well together than if everyone chooses a different OS and DRM.

New Press Release from SCO

[powerlord]

This just in from a SCO representative "NO NO NO!!! Pay US US US!!!" who was then given a passifier and a five minute time out.

An LinuxCE SpokeDroid is quoted as responding with "Beep Boop Bobble ... Ping" which a babblefish correspondent translates loosely as "All your dollar are belong to us".

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".

Clarifying Acronyms: CE = Consumer Electronics

[syntap]

Leave it to the GNU/OSS/GPL guys to give you an acronym without spelling it out first.

"The CE Linux Forum (CELF)..."

They tried describing it but only got there halfway :)

Re:You spelled it wrong

[dasmegabyte]

This is Unix. What's a carriage return?

Fantastic

[ad0le]

This is the true spirit of linux.

Given the magnitude of the invoilved companies, I think this is a great step toward linux. Of the companies listed I own atleast one product from each and think a standardized front end to a broad range of devices is a wonderful idea.

Given the fact that almost every CE device has a frontend nowadays, it would be great if these guys pooled thier resources and created a standardized UI/Widget set that was highly portable and robust enough to handle the demands that these devices would require.

And heads rolled in Redmond

[Tsu Dho Nimh]

"Matsushita Electric Industrial, Sony Corporation, Hitachi, NEC Corporation, Royal Philips Electronics, Samsung Electronics, Sharp Corporation, and Toshiba Corporation 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"

And in other industry news, Microsoft announced that they were replacing all the upper management for their Faithful User Department. The FUD team has often been criticised by high-ranking management for failing to produce the degree of loyalty desired in users. The high profile defections in Germany and Spain reportedly led to a confrontational meeting and a mass firing.

Re:J2ME

[MisterFancypants]

"CE" stands for Consumer Electronics.

I think your brain is getting tripped up on "Windows CE" and is thinking CE == PDA, which is not at all the case. PDAs are a very small subset of all consumer electronics.

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...

Re:Read the PDF for membership?

[Delphiki]

If you give away your software you can't really think of it as your property anymore, i.e. Linux doesn't belong to hackers. Regardless, "general hackers" aren't electronics manufacturers. So why should general hackers dictate what the standards and requirements for Linux on this kind of device is? This organization isn't meant to get input from the hackers, it's meant to make specifications that the coders can choose to implement or not implement.

Re:linux != open

[Gherald]

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.

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.