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: 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

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 :)

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.