Nokia and Intel join Mobile Linux initiative — MobileMonday Global: Industry News

^{GNOME Mobile & Embedded Initiative (GMAE)} Nokia and Intel join Mobile Linux initiative

Ari Jaaksi is the director of Open Source Software Operations at Nokia.

5 May 2007 at 04:19 GMT Timo Poropudas

The GNOME Foundation announced in April the creation of the GNOME Mobile & Embedded Initiative (GMAE), and a software platform for user experience development across a wide range of device profiles.

"GNOME continues to drive the cutting edge of Open Source and Free Software innovation. With the GNOME Mobile & Embedded Initiative, GNOME expands the reach of software freedom to new devices, new markets, and new audiences", said Jeff Waugh, founder of the GNOME Mobile & Embedded Initiative and a director of the GNOME Foundation board.

"Developers will not only have the means to create great mobile and embedded software, but the freedom to envision and create fundamentally new kinds of devices, for entirely new markets."

Mobile, embedded and converged devices comprise one of the most rapidly growing segments of the technology landscape, accounting for sales of billions of units per year.

Analysts estimate that by 2010, one out of two smartphones will be based on Free and Open source software, and growth in this space is already faster than that of proprietary devices (Canalys, 2006). The mobile and embedded device space represents an unprecedented opportunity for third-party developers.

"This initiative augments a thriving commercial and community ecosystem around GNOME for mobile and embedded applications", noted Bill Weinberg, Principal Analyst at LinuxPundit.

"Building on freely-licensed GTK+, GStreamer, and other GNOME software, the GNOME Mobile & Embedded Initiative provides a level playing field for companies and developers, for products and projects, offering a platform for innovation and collaboration."

Founding organizations announcing their participation today include GNOME Foundation supporters ACCESS, Canonical, Debian, Igalia, Imendio, Intel, Nokia, OLPC, OpenedHand and Red Hat, and GMAE contributors CodeThink, Collabora, FIC, Fluendo, Kernel Concepts, Movial, Nomovok, Openismus, Vernier, Waugh Partners and Wolfson Microelectronics.

"GNOME is an active and truly open developer community creating innovative software. This is why Nokia joined the community and chose GNOME software as a foundation for the Maemo platform and our Internet Tablets. We are excited about the growing use of GNOME software in consumer devices. The GNOME Mobile & Embedded Initiative will now take this further by bringing together community and industry to promote and coordinate the continued development of the GMAE platform," said Ari Jaaksi, Director of Open Source Software Operations, Nokia.

Bridging industry and community, the GNOME Mobile & Embedded Initiative involves Open Source projects such as Avahi, BlueZ, Cairo, GNOME, GPE, GStreamer, GTK+, Hildon, Maemo, Matchbox, OpenMoko, Telepathy and Tinymail; and industry organisations CELF, the Linux Foundation and LiPS.

More information about the GNOME Mobile & Embedded Initiative can be found at www.gnome.org/mobile.

The name GNOME has been formed from GNU Object Model Environment. GNU, in turn, is a recursive acronym for GNU's Not Unix.