14 DAY TRIAL // On Monday, the Linux Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, announced that a series of companies from various sectors had committed to the MeeGo project. According to the Foundation, among those willing to participate in the project, one can count device makers, operating system vendors (OSVs), chipset providers, independent software vendors (ISVs) and development communities.
[admark=1]At the same time, the Foundation unveiled that the list of MeeGo supporting companies included Acer, Amino, Asianux, Asus, BMW Group, Collabora, Ltd., CS2C, DeviceVM, EA Mobile, Gameloft, Hancom, Linpus, Maemo Community Council, Mandriva, Metasys, Miracle, MontaVista Software, Novell, PixArt, Red Flag, ST-Ericsson, Tencent, TurboLinux, VietSoftware, Wind River, WTEC, and Xandros.
The MeeGo project is the result of a merger between Intel’s Moblin and Nokia’s Maemo Linux-based platforms. Announced during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the solution is meant to offer support for smartphones, netbooks, connected televisions and more. The participation of a wide range of companies to the project should result in a great amount of time dedicated to “cross-device compatibility, application portability and the user experience for MeeGo-based devices,” the Linux Foundation notes.
MeeGo is an open source software platform, which should help reducing the market fragmentation and complexity. Moreover, the OS is also meant to speed up industry innovation, as well as time-to-market for new devices, Internet-based applications and user experiences. The solution has been designed for cross-device, cross-architecture computing. The first release of MeeGo should arrive in the second quarter of the ongoing year, while applications are expected to become available both via Intel’s AppUp Center and Nokia’s Ovi Store.
“The MeeGo project is being met with enthusiastic support from companies and developers who want to seize the market opportunity that exists for the next-generation of computing devices,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director at The Linux Foundation. “By working with a common set of tools and open technologies for building these devices, MeeGo developers will be able to easily reach the biggest addressable market available.”