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LiMo Foundation: Yet Another Mobile Linux Platform
The foundation, announced 6 months ago, has now a name: LiMo. This is yet another tentative to define a standard Linux Mobile platform. With two big operators, and several phone manufacturers already rolling out Linux based feature-phones, let's hope that it will provide quicker results than earlier tentatives:
To support their goal of creating the world's first globally competitive, Linux-based software platform for mobile devices, Motorola, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic Mobile Communications, Samsung Electronics, and Vodafone announced today the official launch of the LiMo Foundation.
The LiMo Foundation is aimed at blending the community-based development benefits of transparency, innovation and scalability with the best development practices from the mobile community to create an innovative new business model. Overseen by a Board of Directors comprising representatives from the founding member companies including Foundation Chairman, Greg Besio of Motorola and Vice Chair, Kiyohito Nagata of NTT DoCoMo, the LiMo Foundation will be seeking new members interested in participating in the development of a set of APIs, architecture, and contributing source code for the common components of the Linux based mobile platform. Foundation members will be available to discuss membership opportunities at the upcoming 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, February 12-15, 2007.
Foundation members will be involved in building an active ecosystem and will have the opportunity to influence the evolution of the platform, leaving them free to provide compelling and differentiated services to customers.
The LiMo Foundation, through a fair and balanced contribution and
participation process, will focus primarily on the joint development of a
competitive Linux-based mobile platform, built around a common source code
tree that can adapt to ever evolving market requirements around the world. In addition, members will also work on the following:
Establishment of safeguards to minimize fragmentation;
Collaboration on a mobile Linux developer ecosystem;
Co-operation with existing industry organizations
Securing new members from across the industry: device manufacturers,
operators, chip set manufacturers, independent software vendors, integrators and third party developers.
