LiMo

OHA member Wind River and embedded Linux gurus, have been chosen by LiMo to provide the foundation for their CIE (Common Integration Environment). From the Press Release:

To eliminate unnecessary complexity that increases time to market and development costs, OEMs and operators must reduce fragmentation in the Linux handset market. One means of reducing fragmentation is to standardize the mobile handset stack, from the Linux distribution to application framework and above – LiMo’s core objective. To integrate these stack components, a common integration environment is needed where all component providers’ contributions may be managed as both independent modules and an integrated whole.

By contributing key components of its commercial technology, Wind River provides a platform for LiMo to develop, test, certify, and deploy commercial products consisting of components provided by various members of the Foundation. The CIE will:

* Allow LiMo to easily manage components developed by the diverse engineering teams of its members, maintaining quality and ultimately time to market as different application and middleware components are contributed, assembled, and tested within the LiMo platform.
* Allow LiMo to easily update or exchange components, allowing OEMs and operators to differentiate their handsets while remaining within the LiMo standard.
* Allow LiMo to leverage a standard suite of components and applications for multiple projects, which is key to the LiMo mission of reducing time to market for Linux handsets while driving the greatest innovation and differentiation.
* Reduce debugging, test, and validation cycle time by minimizing challenges working with multiple versions of merged software.

This just further affirms that Wind River is the industry leader in Mobile Linux, and perhaps hints at some future LiMo-OHA love?

Here's another sordid story from the debased world of two-timing, polygamous mobile carriers and consumer electronics companies. NTT Do Co Mo has revealed that it feels its in an open relationship with the OHA, but it may go with LiMo if it turns out the sex is better.

This story quotes DoCoMo spokesperson Shuichiro Ichikoshi as saying:

“Our corporate stance is that we are neutral and open to whatever technologies or software that may contribute to progress/pervasion of W-CDMA services or improvement of our services. Consequently, we will openly evaluate and examine Android, as we do with LiMo.”

Personally I'd imagine that LiMo gives better cuddles, but Google can go all night.

DoCoMo isn't the only one giving both LiMo and the OHA a go. Motorola and Samsung are also members of both groups. It raises questions around how much meaning membership has. These companies can attach their name to whatever comes along; if the platform goes big they can gobble the credit, whereas if it doesn't perform so well the comany can dispose of it like a used condom. DoCoMo and their ilk may be paying lip service to the concept of standardization, but are they actually putting any resources into seeing it happen?

CNET news is asking whether or not Android will spur a wave of viruses that target mobile phones.

At the heart of the article is this blog post at F-secure's site, in which they state “The key issue here is whether Android will go for totally open systems.” F-secure is the creator of security software for Symbian and Windows CE, so they're, like, experts and stuff.

Just yesterday, McAfee global marketing manager Jan Volzke stated “McAfee is looking forward to support this new initiative by contributing our security expertise and technology leadership.” No word yet on whether the OHA is taking them up on the offer. McAfee is already a member of the LiMo foundation.

Many experts believe that making Android's open source will result in a more secure platform. The argument is that with complete transaparancy security issues can be identified and fixed more quickly and easily. Ben Whitaker of Masabi, a mobile security company, is quoted here as saying "Gphone is open source, which means it can get a good kicking and shoeing, and can be worked on by just about anyone,"

Traditionally, Linux has been less of a target for virus writers and crackers because it was not a popular platform. If Android becomes ubiquitous, will the number of exploits targeting Linux go up? Will my Debian install be in greater danger?