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Consortium Tackles Linux Mobile Phone Standards
An anonymous reader writes "LinuxDevices.com is running an article stating that ten companies have recently banded together to launch a cross-industry consortium to further advance embedded Linux platforms. They hope to make 'Linux into a plug-and-play mobile phone platform comparable to Microsoft's Windows Mobile Smartphone OS, but with greater flexibility and lower costs. The LiPS (Linux Phone Standard) Forum intends to help make Linux a more standardized, interoperable mobile phone OS.' Meanwhile, some market research suggests that Linux is already giving Windows Mobile a run for its money."
C'mon. If you're an embedded developer, what're you going to (want to) go for? A closed-source, royalty-based model, or an open-source, royalty-free model -- especially wherein you're able to modify the kernel to your whim? MS's marketing will be sure to push the first option, but common sense really makes the second pretty damn attractive.
"why oh why can't I just get a phone that works as a phone?!"
There, hopefully that'll stop this discussion from having 80% comments like this...
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
i didn't realize how huge linux was in the smartphone market. i figured it was all between windows mobile and symbian.
i can see standardizing mobile linux as being a very good thing for linux in that market.
maybe linux's lead isn't so large - the last link in the article, when you read through it, points out that the data does not inlclude phones/pdas running on microsoft's pocket PC edition of windows.