Open source software battle heats up

Big announcements at the recently concluded Computex 2010 showed that open source software market competition will be tighter: Intel was all-out praises for MeeGo while ARM disclosed tying up with six enterprises to enter Linux-based open source software camp.

ARM, Freescale, IBM, Samsung, ST-Ericsson and Texas Instruments announced the establishment of Linaro at Computex. This is an organization of chip industry players, aiming mainly to promote the development of Linux-based products, and its first forecasted activity is to launch the first version of software and tools in November 2010.

At the other side of exhibition hall, Intel held an Atom software summit, discussing Intel AppUp Center and MeeGo. Besides Acer's endorsement of MeeGo plan, announcing plans to launch several portable MeeGo-based netbooks this year 2010, Asus, Quanta and Inventec have also revealed product development plans, including tablet PCs which have been viewed as the next star of electronic industry.

Shift to Linux
Linux has never attracted so much concentration before. "I have come to Computex many times. In the past few years, no one in this exhibition seems to be discussing software," said Jim Zemlin, executive supervisor of Linux Foundation. "So it is very exciting for Linux to get on the stage with the population of mobile computing."

Zemlin attended the press conference for foundation of Linaro as representative of Linux Foundation. The organization, with the aim of improving open source software, supports both Meego and the activities of ARM camp.

"In the future, camera, digital photo frame, TV set, computer and any portable and CE products, all shall be connective devices, carrying certain version of OS, while all the cores, C software libraries, and elements shall be integrated by certain method, so as to be applied in the huge quantity of future connected devices," Zemlin said. "All these shall favor greater business opportunities for Linux-based software, so we welcome any Linux-promoting power to join in."

Undoubtedly, the war for the leading position in the next generation of portable network devices has been transformed from hardware to software. Everyone, from the major chip vendors, mobile manufacturers, and software suppliers, wants a slice of the next generation plug-in products market, which is brewing great opportunity of business.

Linaro, a new player in the game, is aiming to eat up all the ranges of Linux: it shall support R&D of open source code of Linux software, including Android, LiMo, MeeGo, Ubuntu and webOS etc. The group plans to issue optimization tools, cores and medium software every six months. Linaro has issued 10.05 beta version in parallel with its establishment. In November 2010, it shall issue the formal 10.11 version software and tools for the SoC of its membership enterprises; then in May 2011, it shall launch 11.05 version.

Linaro plans to simply the development of open source codes via common fundamental software.