Hardware Companies Team Up To Fight Mobile Linux Fragmentation

Nunavut writes with news that a number of hardware companies have banded together to battle the fragmentation of the mobile Linux market. ARM, Freescale Semiconductor, IBM, Samsung, ST-Ericsson, and Texas Instruments are forming Linaro, a nonprofit organization that plans to focus on "low-level software around the Linux kernel that touches the silicon, key pieces of middleware that enable new markets, and tools that help the developer write and debug code." "Linaro's chief goal is to reduce the time that it takes to bring a new ARM-powered product to market with Linux. This effort is largely neutral with respect to what software environment and components individual vendors choose to run in user space. Linaro will not compete with existing platforms such as MeeGo and Android. Instead, it will attempt to improve the shared underlying software components that allow those platforms and others to run on ARM SoCs. In principle, this could actually reduce fragmentation at the lower levels of the Linux stack."

Not necessarily

[Kupfernigk]

To quote a BSi project manager I once used to work with, there are 2 sorts of standards initiative - those intended to get something done, which can be very fast, and those intended to hold up standardisation while the prime mover gains market share. Since this is intended to create a standard quicker than Windows 7 whatever edition can gain traction, it could all happen very fast.

I once had the good fortune to work on a project where the standard proceeded so much faster than capability that for 6 months we were the world's only supplier of a standards-compliant product, though a small one. Believe me, it was worth the effort.

Re:if they'll fail

[JohnBailey]

These days, the underlying OS doesn't matter, even when it comes to mobile devices. That's not where the interesting or critical development is happening. What matters these days is the higher-level APIs. Those are what mobile applications use, with very few mobile apps actually needing to care about the underlying OS.

Absolutely.. The really important bit is the place where they hay is stored for the unicorns. Apple user right?