14 DAY TRIAL // In September 2005, PalmSource, responsible for the development of Palm OS was bought for $324 million dollars by the Japanese company behind the NetFront Browser, ACCESS. Earlier this year, Palm Source, now known as Access System, presented a new Linux-based operating system for smartphones, Access Linux, meant to be the next version of Palm OS. The Access Linux Platform (ALP) was to be released by the end of 2006.
ACCESS recently announced that Access Linux's release date has been pushed back, the OS' new release date being sometime in the first half of 2007. ALP's final name remains unknown as ACCESS announces that the platform's official name won't be revealed until the product is available. As a result, the release of ALP-based devices before the end of next year is also very unlikely.
Palm has recently acquired a $44 million perpetual license to Palm OS Garnet and according to the agreement, Palm was granted specific rights to modify the source code in any way for using it in their devices, including the Treo smartphones. According to some rumors, Palm also intends to develop a Linux-based operating system that will allow users to continue running already available Palm OS applications.
ACCESS already announced that the ACCESS Linux platform includes Palm OS compatibility with its GHost (Garnet on Host) layer that is supposed to allow most properly written 68k Palm OS applications to run on ALP-based mobile phones.