
ARM, IBM, Samsung and T.I. Form New Company to rollout Linux-Based Devices - pclark
http://www.linaro.org/arm-freescale-ibm-samsung-st-ericsson-and-texas-instruments-form-new-company-to-speed-the-rollout-of-linux-based-devices/
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ZeroGravitas
There's a vital word missing because the title needed to be truncated.

These guys are already rolling out linux-based devices, this new company they
are forming together isn't going to produce devices, just to make that process
go faster and easier.

Most of the comments think this is designed to compete with things (Android,
Ubuntu etc.) that it's actually designed to work with and make better on the
hardware platforms they care about.

Interesting reading in the FAQs:

<http://www.linaro.org/faqs/>

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fragmede
What's their commitment to actually mainlining their kernel contributions?

TI has git repositories for their OMAP boards[1], (and has for ages). What
about the other major players _in this space_? (I'm thinking of MontaVista [2]
and WindRiver[3])

[1]<https://gforge.ti.com/gf/project/omapkernel/scmgit/>
[2]<http://www.mvista.com/product_detail_mvl6.php> [3]
<http://www.windriver.com/products/linux/>

~~~
ZeroGravitas
From their FAQ:

Q10. How will you work with existing open source projects and the upstream?

A10. We will work with upstream projects directly. There are many existing
projects that are creating great software. The best way of helping these
projects is to join in, working with them and donating code directly to their
development trunks.

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dman
Heres to hoping the following things come out of this alliance - a) Cheap and
full featured devkits. b) Fast boot times for arm distros. c) An easy to setup
cross compile environment, ideally with prebuilt arm packages. d) Eclipse /
other ide support with the ability to run compiled arm apps in qemu.

All of these things exist seperately to some extent, but a coherent devkit
that brings all this together and gives a newbie friendly dev environment
would be great.

~~~
fhars
I wouldn't hope for too much, some of these companies just don't get free
software at all. Samsung for example manages to pull off the trick of
installing a _pirated copy of linux_ on every consumer electronics device they
sell by illegally relicencing other people's GLP2 code under the GPL3...

------
Aegean
There has been similar other foundations in the past. Generally their work was
in the form of a filesystem or distribution but it never picked up as
mainstream. I hope this brings out something useful.

I suppose this will deliver a tools + kernel + distro kind of work.

------
buster
I can understand ARM, Samsung, T.I. and others working together to push their
embedded platforms/tools/chips. Not sure what IBMs reason is, though. Do they
sell embedded devices/chips?

Also it does mention "Android, LiMo, MeeGo, Ubuntu and webOS". I suppose this
will lead to some better driver support on the linux side and very lowlevel
tools to support/push development of those operating systems on ARM platforms.

~~~
johnohara
They sell large-scale solutions -- and have invested heavily in *nix.

Off the top of my head I can think of POS systems, hand-held data acquisition
devices (car rental, inventory control, etc.), shop-floor control panels, and
more.

I think T.I.'s involvement is interesting. Maybe a new TI-100 running linux
(IBM) with a beautiful color display (Samsung), and the ability to morph from
data acquisition to calculator to communicator to set-top player (ARM based).

~~~
buster
I see. Didn't know IBM builds those. Good to know, thanks. :)

~~~
whatusername
IBM's big new push is "Smarter Planet".. Think: sensors on everything -
electric grids, roads, etc... lots of small embedded systems.

(and IBM will try and sell you HW, analytics software, services, etc to run
it)

------
rpledge
Way to many massive competing companies involved in this for it to succeed.
Bigger isn't always better....

~~~
DrSprout
Open source _only_ works when you have massive competing companies
contributing.

~~~
rpledge
I'm not saying that, in fact I agree with you. However, 6 giant corporations
all trying to align themselves to a common strategy doesn't work. Most
contributions to open source by big companies are self serving: they enable
profits for the company. I can't see TI doing work to enable Freescale to
expand its marketshare.

In the best case the outcome will be the lowest common denominator: something
so abstract its of no use to anyone doing real work.

I'd be happy to be wrong, but I don't think I am.

~~~
DrSprout
TI and Freescale are both in the same boat when we're talking about mobile
Internet devices. They both have a variety of products that currently have a
very small set of specialized software that runs on them. In order to gain
traction against the x86 desktop and iPhone OS, they need platforms like
Android and MeeGo to work flawlessly with minimal configuration on all of
their hardware.

We're quickly getting to the stage where we want these devices talking
directly to printers. All of the companies involved want to make sure that as
much as possible, printing companies can write one driver and have it work
anywhere. Better still would be if no custom driver were needed.

There's also the current issues with upgrading existing devices to newer
Android releases. If they can streamline the low-level stuff to get updates
out quickly on Google's heels, it will add considerable value to their
products.

So there's definitely a lot of motivation for them to clean up the embedded
Linux ecosystem.

------
pierrefar
Where is Google? Will this _really_ fragment Android? They do say they want to
contribute to Android.

~~~
jeremiah
Google is in Mountain View, California.

This won't fragment Android, this non-profit entity is designed to make
installing Linux on an ARM licensee's silicon easier. There is still a bit of
catching up the ARM folks have to do, this project aims to enable it.

I agree it looks like there will be lots of competing interests, but there
should be enough of a common denominator amongst the ARM chip makers to at
least make porting Linux to their platform less painful. That will enable
Android - not fracture it.

