Mobile Linux Group Releases First Specification 46
narramissic writes "Google's Android may be getting all the headlines, but the venerable LiPS (Linux Phone Standards Forum), which launched to much fanfare in 2005, is rolling out the specs. The group, comprised of companies including Orange, France Telecom, MontaVista, and Access, announced Monday that it has completed the first release of its mobile Linux specification, adding components including APIs for telephony, messaging, calendar, instant messaging, and presence functions, as well as new user interface components."
Orange is France Telecom (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.orange.com/english/access/aboutUs.php [orange.com]
Re:Compared to Google's Open Handset Alliance? (Score:5, Informative)
I haven't looked at the actual standards, but perhaps it would be possible to extend the OHA code to add LiPS support, to produce a phone that can run apps developed for either.
Re:OK, so I didn't read TFA... (Score:5, Informative)
LiPS is a partnership between PalmSource/ACCESS and MontaVista Linux to collaborate on Linux phone development. Open Source Development Labs (OSDL, Slashdot's mom) began its own Mobile Linux Initiative in 2005, involving MontaVista, Wind River, and PalmSource. LiPS seemed to be an outgrowth of that. Trolltech introduced its own Greenphone platform based on Qt last fall. Earlier this year, NTT DoCoMo and Vodafone formed their own group called LiMo to develop Linux standards for mobiles. The majority of Linux phones are built by Motorola, which uses MontaVista's Linux. They are sold to the Chinese market and are not open in any sense. [2]
Google's Android is an Apache-like collaboration that shares Google's plans and implementation rather than forming a group to develop some. [3]
Apple's iPhone is based around its Mach+BSD+Cocoa architecture, but is just as closed as most Linux phones. It appears Apple will open development in the sense of releasing an SDK that allows commercial development, but it's not yet known how much access developers will have. [4][5]
One significant difference between Linux on a PC and Linux on a mobile is that it is illegal to expose the core baseband processor architecture to open software, because that would make it trivial to create network destroying devices. So "Linux-based mobiles" are really just mobile phones that have some extra environment to run the user interface and higher level functions. They are not freedom/open/GPL untainted by Big Brother/Capitalism/Corporations.
That makes it valid to be interested in mobile Linux because of familiarity with the architecture, the availability of low cost software, and a desire to expand the market for Linux based products, but there is little real political GPL-freedom argument for pursuing mobile Linux.
Google appears to initially be targeting Windows Mobile [6], and offers an alternative to the increasingly creaky Symbian [7]. Some amount of Google's Android seems complementary with efforts to use Linux on the lower levels, but it also competes against the higher level plans of LiPS, Greenphone, LiMo, and OpenMoko, none of which appear to have a very significant future.
[1] Apple iPhone vs the FIC Neo1973 OpenMoko Linux Smartphone [roughlydrafted.com]
[2] The Standard Soup Prepared by Linux Mobile's Many Chefs [roughlydrafted.com]
[3] The Great Google gPhone Myth [roughlydrafted.com]
[4] Steve Jobs Ends iPhone SDK Panic [roughlydrafted.com]
[5] Leopard, Vista and the iPhone OS X Architecture [roughlydrafted.com]
[6] The Spectacular Failure of WinCE and Windows Mobile [roughlydrafted.com]
[7] Origins: Why the iPhone is ARM, and isn't Symbian [roughlydrafted.com]