Glenn Seiler

OpenSAF Developer Days 2009

I just returned from the second annual OpenSAF Developers Days. This was a two-day event that included discussions on the latest developments in the project, some of the new standards that have been defined by the Service Availability Forum and the project's road map plans for the next release. The event was hosted by Huawei at their corporate headquarters in Shenzhen, China. One of the reasons the project choose to do the event in China this year is because they wanted it to be accessible to the ever-increasing number of development teams in Asia Pacific. From the turnout I would have to say this was a very successful event. The event was attended by major TEMs from Europe, North America and Asia Pacific, as well as by leading platform providers and operating system vendors.

In case you are not familiar with OpenSAF, it is an open source implementation of the Service Availability Forum's (SAF) standard for application high availability. Specifically it is based on the Application Interface Specification (AIS) but also adds other capabilities that are key for high availability such as hardware interface and system management. The project is 100 percent open source and uses the LGPL license. The OpenSAF project is about two years old now, however it was changed to the LGPL license in January 2008 and since then has experienced significant growth. There were over 200 individual contributions in 2008, which is the sign of a strong, active community. OpenSAF is being developed into LTE gateways; IMS servers and other core and edge devices and some of the devices are in operator networks today.

As with any new project, there are doubters about the success of OpenSAF. The most common objection I hear is why would an equipment provider switch from their legacy, field-tested and fully integrated HA solution to this new OpenSAF technology? Actually there are many reasons but it always boils down to the benefits that companies receive with open source. Staying with your legacy software may have short-term advantages; you can get that current project out faster, you don't have to modify or port your applications and your developers are familiar with it. But in the long run companies always benefit from leveraging a community of developers, the fast innovation of open source, the ecosystem of a standards-based solution and the flexibility of suppliers. We have all seen this with Linux for the operating system and then with Eclipse for tools. High Availability is now commonly regarded as a standard component of a Carrier Grade Base Platform and the inevitability of open source HA software being combined with open source Linux to create this base platform is undeniable. For some companies it will take longer than others but it is just a matter of time.

Some of the most interesting sessions at the Developer Days event were discussions about the newer SAF standards for platform management (PLM) and software management framework (SMF). Integrating software management (in place or hitless upgrades) and hardware management (monitoring and managing HW failures) into an overall HA solution completes the Carrier Grade Base Platform. Both PLM and SMF are relatively new standards that the OpenSAF project is looking at for the next release. Another interesting discussion was around creating more modularity for the project. Initially the OpenSAF code was pretty monolithic and this made the code unwieldy for some projects or devices. Not all devices need the same amount of availability, so creating modularity around services with inter-dependencies allows for much more flexible deployment. It seems to be clear that the project has made great progress in the last year, and from the look of the information presented at Developer Days, the remainder of 2009 and 2010 seem to be poised for great success. All the presentations from Developer Days are available on the OpenSAF website.

Green Linux and Green Telecom – Where do they intersect?

Green, green, everything is green. It is spring now, the hills around Silicon Valley are bright and green and everything in the yard is in full bloom. Even in our jobs everything is green in these times. You can’t watch TV or listen to the news or read a press release without hearing about Green. And of course this is all for very good reasons – even if we were in a good economy we would still have to start taking measures to reduce the energy we consume and conserve power and resources.

You may have heard a lot about Green Telecom, and like many of today’s catch phrases it can mean a lot of different things. One aspect of Green Telecom that you read a lot about is the use of alternative energy to drive base stations and wireless infrastructure, especially in emerging nations. There is a great video from Ericsson on YouTube that discusses this, and that is part of a larger sequence of videos on Green Telecom. They describe using solar energy and bio-fuels in "off-grid" countries and how people who only make a few dollars a week are willing to spend some of that money to have communication services available.

But another key topic of Green is the increased demand for power management. This is not just a Telecom issue, but is important for any IT department, Operator Data Center, Central Office or co-location server farm. Power Management is where we start to see a concerted effort and overlap between Green Linux and the Telecom industry. I recently have attended two unique and separate SIG events that discussed Power Management. The Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit in April and then just last week a SCOPE-Alliance general members meeting. Power management was a key issue that is being addressed by both groups and there is definitely an overlap. Of course you would expect that considering Linux is the most widely used operating system in new Telecom network devices being designed today.

The Linux Foundation has started a Green Linux Workgroup and is working with many different projects in support of Green Linux. Green Linux, like Telecom, can mean many things but some of the most significant work is being done around ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface). Unfortunately ACPI is targeted specifically at IA (Intel Architecture) and many Telecom devices use PowerPC or MIPs, as well as Intel. But it is a good start. Especially since many core and edge devices are larger more power-hungry devices and those often do use Intel Architecture. Check out what the Linux Foundation is doing in terms of Green Linux here.

The SCOPE-Alliance has recently started a Power Management workgroup as well. The challenge for this group is to define profiles and requirements that map the high availability functionality of the Hardware Platform Interface (HPI) specification together with ACPI and IPMI. The HPI specification from the Service Availability Forum was not really written with power management in mind, but rather the management of field replaceable units (FRUs) and has always had a fairly tight coupling with IPMI. Now, with such a strong focus on power management in the industry, the SCOPE Workgroup is looking at requirements for how ACPI can fit into a hardware management profile that manages all aspects of the hardware including power. That may seem fairly straightforward, until you start to inject virtualization and the use of a hypervisor into the formula. It is not prudent to create a management model today that does not include virtualization, but it greatly increases the complexity of hardware management. Since ACPI and HPI are not integrated, and neither is designed with the concept of a hypervisor in mind, the challenge of bringing these all together is not simple. If the purpose of the hypervisor is to abstract the hardware, and management applications are typically in user space, then getting the ACPI or HPI commands around, or through, the hypervisor is something that there is no real standard for or consensus on how to do this. Or you could just put the management directly in the hypervisor, though that increases the complexity of the hypervisor, which generally should be as ‘light’ as possible.

A lot of great minds from many different companies are working on the various ACPI, HPI and hypervisor projects. But to some extent these projects are stovepiped and not looking across at each other. It is great to see an organization like SCOPE-Alliance that is trying to bridge all of these into a single profile and set of requirements that will ultimately result in a greener Telecom industry.

Moblin and Linux Foundation - A Mature Move

If you have been following the Moblin project at all, then you probably know that recently the Linux Foundation announced they will be hosting the Moblin open source project, which was previously hosted directly by Intel. At the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit in San Francisco last week one of the attendees asked me why LF would host Moblin, and that it did not seem like a natural fit. Actually, that is not the case at all, it is a perfect fit for both organizations. First of all, Intel had to let the project go and let it become more mainstream. This is necessary because if they really want the broad base of developers to adopt it, it cannot be seen as too Intel or architecture specific. Let me say up front, Intel is one company that really understands how to manage and contribute to open source projects. But it is also a great fit for Linux Foundation. Remember that the legacy of Linux Foundation dates back to the Open Source Development Labs, which focused on industry specific workgroups like Mobile Linux, Desktop Linux and Carrier Grade Linux. The Linux Foundation fosters and supports all flavors of Linux adoption and proliferation, not just bread-and-butter enterprise Linux. LF understands that the next big wave of Linux adoption will come from devices, not IT servers, and what bigger market for Linux than consumer mobile devices!  The Linux Foundation is well established, well funded and Moblin and LF have agreement on how to work with the community, move technology up stream and generally progress the project. And Intel is still very commit ed and adding resources to the project. So this is a natural and strategic move for both organizations.

However....I was a bit dismayed when listening to the presentation on Moblin 2. They showed a typical stack chart that had the Moblin core software sitting on top of the ATOM hardware. It was clear that the entire design center for Moblin is ATOM. Of course this is no big surprise, given that Intel designed Moblin and Intel is in the business of selling processors. But if this is truly to be the 'next big thing' in mobile devices, then it will have to support other architectures as well. The good news is that this is a true open source project and anyone or any company can create a port and start or contribute a processor-specific branch to the project. That may seem like a 'no brainer', but when you look at similar projects such as LiMo or Android, which are not true open source projects (you must be a 'member' to access or distribute much of the code) then you can begin to really appreciate how Intel is managing this and see why the Linux Foundation is such a natural fit for hosting this project. Kudos to Intel for seeing this and doing the right thing. What remains now for the project is to get some non-Intel maintainers and start to evolve the project into an architecture-neutral solution.

 As for the project itself I was impressed with a lot of the work they are doing. There are definitely some cool technologies going into this project. Intel promises to focus on four key areas in the Moblin 2 project:

1. Fast Boot - but this is not a 'patch' or a piece of code. It is a design methodology that involves good system design, good programming and processes. They claim they can boot (on an ATOM) in 5 seconds and their design goal is 2 seconds.
2. Next generation UI - they promise Moblin 2 will not be the same as Moblin. They will use technology called Clutter that is developed similar to a game engine. This will deliver much richer animation then is typical in today's mobile devices. See the internetnews article for more information on Clutter. 
3. Connection Management - they will the ConMan protocol for enabling Moblin devices to connect not just to WiFi but also to Bluetooth, WiMax, Edge and 3G.
4. Tools - They plan to adopt and use tools such as PowerTOP (designed to measure a devices power consumption), LatencyTOP, project builder and Moblin Image Creator.

Moblin seems to have most of the right success factors lined up. Strong corporate support from Intel and its ecosystem partners, support from the community and Linux Foundation, leading-edge technology selection and a good sense of what it will take to succeed in the market. But the real success of Moblin as an open source project will be when we see it running on all mobile devices, even ones using ARM and OMAP processors as well as ATOM.   

The Telecom Consortia Alphabet Soup

What do they all mean and how are they different…

I often get asked what is the difference between the LiMo Foundation and the Open Handset Alliance, or what is the difference between the SCOPE Alliance Carrier Grade OS and Carrier Grade Linux or the difference between SAF and OpenSAF on the infrastructure side of the business. Unless you are really close to the Telecom industry in some capacity that is directly involved with one of those organizations, it can all seem very confusing as well as a bit redundant. In actuality there is very little overlap and each organization fits a very specific role in the ecosystem. First, it is important to note that both the maturity and the objective of the consortia are quite different between the terminal (or handset) side of the business and the infrastructure side. Another key distinction is what I like to call “solutions-based” consortia and “open standards” based consortia. Almost all of the hand-set consortia getting hype in the press today are “solutions-based” consortia such as the LiMo Foundation and the Open Handset Alliance. These consortia are not focused on creating standards that drive wide interoperability. Rather their objective is to drive a specific solution to market and preferably, to gain a market advantage while doing that. And on top of that, only members of the consortia have access to the solution(s). These consortia are really more of a large business development group, each member company focused on how they can drive business through the consortia. Now, there is nothing particularly wrong with that and it is an important part of growing a nascent market, as long as you don’t confuse it with developing standards. The infrastructure part of telecom is a bit more mature, leveraging off of the wireline business that has existed for nearly a century.  The primary objective of open-standards based consortia in the infrastructure market is usually to define standards that ultimately create an even playing field for all companies in a market, whether they are members of the consortia or not. The solutions-based consortia (LiMo and OHA) create implementations or reference platforms for a specific set of software that may be open source or proprietary and is usually a combination of both.

On the other hand the standards-based consortia do not create reference platforms. In fact that is usually frowned upon. I remember the early days of the Carrier Grade Linux Workgroup when we made a reference implementation of CGL. It was rejected by the Linux community because it was not considered “open”, but rather an implementation created just to server the members of CGL. But since those early days the CGL workgroup abandoned the reference platform and only documented requirements and specifications for what a Carrier Grade Linux should be; not creating any actual implementations. Now the CGL and the Linux community enjoy a strong cooperative relationship sponsored by the Linux Foundation.

Another interesting relationship is that between SAF (Service Availability Framework) and OpenSAF. SAF is a standards-based consortium of the most pure kind. SAF only creates APIs for high-availability (HA) that can then be adopted by any company (whether they are members of SAF or not) and can be used in HA applications and operating systems. SAF APIs have widely become the standard for HA in nearly all telecommunications companies and the APIs drive interoperability between hardware and applications. The OpenSAF Foundation is an interesting consortium, as it is a mix between a solution and a standards-based consortium. OpenSAF is creating an open source implementation (e.g. solution) of SAF. OpenSAF is actually an open source project and does not define any standards or APIs themselves; instead they work very closely with the SAF consortia. The difference between OpenSAF and the handset consortia however is that OpenSAF is strictly an open source-based project and is available to any individual or company that wants do download it, unlike the handset consortia that are member-only. OpenSAF is based on a LGPL license and open standards (SAF) but it is very much a solution or implementation.

Finally there is the SCOPE Alliance, another consortia that is not really a standards-based consortium, but rather an industry advisory organization. Made up of the all the leading network equipment providers (NEPs), the SCOPE Alliance charter is to define profiles, recommendations for a Carrier Grade Base Platform and promote open standards in the Telecom market. SCOPE uses only existing open standards from CGL, SAF, ATCA and other groups to define profiles of what standards are needed for Carrier Grade platforms. In addition they are also delivering recommendations to the industry, in the form of white papers, on requirements and use cases for virtualization, power management and other key areas in Telecom.

No matter if they are solutions-based, open-standards based or a mixture of both or whether they address the terminal or the infrastructure part of Telecom; all of these consortia serve a key roll in further developing their markets. They also serve the very important function of accelerating the market and defining standards and solutions that can be used to develop commercial products long into the future.

Linux Foundation's Collaboration Summit

Today was the first day of the inaugural Linux Foundation's Collaboration Summit. In case you don’t remember the Linux Foundation was formed as merger of the Open Source Development Labs and the Free Standards Group. The Collaboration Summit represents the first face-to-face meeting of the members of this new consortium. For many members that were previously very active in the OSDL there has been a lot of anticipation and anxiety about how the new organization will represent all the Linux community - those of us in the Device Software market as well as the mainstream Enterprise market.

I have to say this first day has been a very pleasant surprise. There have been some really good panel and keynote presentations. In particular the first panel included the prominent kernel maintainers and kernel developers including Andrew Morton, James Bottomley, Chris Wright, Ted Tso and Greg KH. Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Ubuntu Linux, gave the keynote discussion.

Other panels included a vendor panel and a panel discussing some of the legal and business issues around Open Source and GPL.

One of the common threads I noticed throughout the day was an open discussion about just how “Commercial Ready” the Linux kernel is today. It was particularly interesting to hear Andrew describe the current kernel.org (2.6.21) model of development as “creating a technology which others will then productize.” The kernel panel went on to state that the rapid rate of change created an environment where they “need the vendors to tell us how good the product is.” One of the developers mentioned that there could be as many as 2000 lines of code per day that are changed or added. How can any single commercial company keep up with that and still focus on developing their revenue-generating applications. This is precisely the value that a commercial Linux distributor such as Wind River provides to our customers. In fact it is even more important and relevant for Wind River as we productize Linux for other architectures besides just the x86-based architectures.

Mark Shuttleworth further expanded on this thread by mentioning that while the Linux community has good tools and significant maturity in collaborating within a given project, that it is less mature in collaboration between multiple projects. Again this is precisely the reason that companies developing applications should rely on commercial quality Linux so they can be certain that all the different components of a Linux distribution; tools, kernel, drivers, file systems, middleware, etc all work together, dependencies have been resolved and everything is well integrated. Another key thread of the various discussions was the need for stability and how important it was not to fork the kernel. Nearly every one of the developers stated how important it was that distributions adopt a strategy of not including patches into their distributions unless they are relatively certain those patches are on a trajectory to be included in the mainline kernel downstream (in a future version of Linux). Now of course there is never any guarantee that any given patch will be accepted, but there is usually a pretty good consensus in the community whether a particular technology or project will be targeted for mainstream. This policy of only adopting mainstream patches has always been a cornerstone of Wind River’s Linux strategy. The last thing we want to do is leave our customers stranded on a patch or a piece of technology that no one in the community wants to adopt or support.

The last panel of the day was end-users discussing why they moved to Linux. Now these customers were primarily Enterprise and IT based customers, but their discussions could easily apply to any organization developing Linux solutions. When asked why they choose Linux for their organizations, each answer was different, yet they are consistent with my experiences over the last several years talking companies making the Linux decision. One speaker representing a large search-engine company indicated their reason for choosing Linux was choice and control of their destiny. A reason I hear quite often. Another, representing a residential security company, indicated they needed to standardize across all their systems. Essentially it was about standards. He went on to indicate that his company had not really seen a lot of cost savings, that implementing Linux, in the end, was probably the same as implementing a proprietary solution. But the benefit of having standards interfaces, standard applications was a key benefit. Finally one panelist did suggest that his company was seeing cost savings with Linux.

One of the key take-aways from this day was that Linux has certainly come of age; nearly every organization is using it in some capacity. But perhaps most important is that most companies are not going it alone. There is tremendous value in using a commercial distribution vendor to provide a consistent roadmap; support, quality and validation and distribution vendors provide a key service in the ecosystem and the community.

Announcing: Wind River Real-Time Core 5.0

In February 2007, Wind River announced the acquisition of FSMLabs RTCore technology along with our plans to offer the technology with Wind River Linux.  Our progress on integration and our satisfaction with the technology continues to grow, and I am happy to announce that Wind River Real-Time Core 5.0 [pdf document] for Wind River Linux 1.5 is now available. Real-Time Core Technology will enable existing Wind River Linux users to achieve guaranteed real-time response for their applications and more importantly the availability of Real-Time Core enables Linux to be deployed in devices previously restricted to using an RTOS.

The subject of real-time performance has come up in several occasions. In our initial benchmark efforts, Real-Time Core provides comparable performance to VxWorks and superior performance to the conditional real-time response provided by PREEMPT and the supporting real-time Linux kernel patches available today. Our intention in offering Wind River Real-Time Core is to expand the use of Linux in embedded applications and to offer Wind River users the broadest range of real-time choice with VxWorks, Wind River Linux with PREEMPT, and Wind River Real-Time Core each providing their own benefits and strengths. We welcome you to review these various offerings and send us questions and feedback.

VxWorks will continue to be the flagship of the Wind River portfolio offering the most consistent single-digit microsecond real-time response. In addition, VxWorks will continue to offer the highest levels of security and safety critical certifications available.  Wind River Linux will continue to provide conditional real-time response with PREEMPT for users who are excited about the benefits of open-source and can achieve their applications specific definition of ‘real-time’ using this technology. While, Wind River Real-Time Core will add guaranteed real-time response to Linux providing the best real-time response for single-processor devices, aerospace and defense applications, industrial equipment, and other precision application.

Choice and flexibility are the goals that drive our efforts to deliver multiple DSO solutions that address a variety of application requirements. And standardization and support are the keys that give people the confidence and trust in making those choices. We’d like to hear your thoughts about real-time applications and performance. We’ll let you know about benchmark information and best-practices guides in the future.

Report from the International Telecommunications Union Conference

I’ve been in Hong Kong the last week visiting the ITU Telecom World 2006. The theme of this show, as articulated by a keynote speech from Vivian Reding, the European Union commissioner for Information Society and Media, is “Living in the Digital World”.  The fact that someone from the EU was giving the keynote at a Telecom show in Asia shows just how international this trade-show is. There are pavilions from nearly every major country, with Telecom providers from each country showing how they are bringing to their markets new Fixed Mobile Convergence services such as VoIP to cell phones.

As with any large trade-show – and this show is one of the largest – it’s a little overwhelming. There are so many vendors all trying to get their message heard above the others. There are ten halls of vendors with everything that has anything to do with telecommunications – from coaxial cable vendors with cable as big as my arm (for FTTP – Fiber-to-the-Premise) to consumer electronics. It is the latter of course that drew my attention. It was hard to escape the hype around triple play. Not just to the home or office, but to the phone itself.

One of the big messages from the major consumer vendors – Panasonic, Toshiba, OKI, NEC – was the adoption and deployment of DLNA (or Digital Living Network Alliance), a fairly new special interest group (SIG) driving the adoption of home networks. The home network is a huge market in Asia and Japan, and it is just a matter of time until it becomes hot in the U.S. as well. 

I spend a lot time tracking and participating in standards bodies and SIGs, and it appears that DLNA really got it right. DLNA consists of over 330 member companies today ranging from consumer electronics companies, PC vendors and software vendors. Consistent with the way a lot of “.orgs” are working today, the DLNA doesn’t actually create any new standards. The members are just defining use-cases around existing standards and protocols and then publishing design guidelines and test methodology around these use cases. Some example use cases are:

1. Uploading video clips from your phone onto a home media server using wireless access so they can be viewed on the television – and from any room in the house
2. Uploading music from your phone wirelessly at your friend’s house to his media server.

These are two very real scenarios for the “digital home” and achievable now.

DNLA defines three ‘components’ to its guidelines that help achieve the goals:

• DMS or Digital Media Server using http as a transfer protocol
• DMP or Digital Media Player that includes audio and video encoding
• DMC or Digital Media Controller for control functions.

One of the more interesting implementations of DLNA was demonstrated by Toshiba. Toshiba has branded something called the “High Definition Network” or HDN. I have to say this technology was pretty impressive. Beautiful crisp high definition video on screens 20 feet wide. Not the grainy display you get on most large screens. Just think what that would look like in your living room. HDN is Toshiba’s DLNA technology to deliver smooth access of Hi Def images to any room, at any time, via a wireless home network. DLNA is a real world implementation of Fixed-Mobile Convergence that will visibly affect all of us in the near future. It will enrich our every-day lives by making it easier to do the things we value most; listening to music, sharing our experiences and of course – watching television.

Red Hat is NOT Carrier-Grade Linux

There was a very interesting announcement yesterday from Red Hat regarding a collaboration with Nokia for carrier grade server systems. The most interesting thing I noticed about this news was how the term “Carrier Grade Linux” was not mentioned once in the entire document. There were several mentions of Carrier Grade Servers – it even went so far as calling them Enterprise Servers, but not one mention of Carrier Grade Linux.

One of the really beneficial things about standards like the OSDL’s Carrier Grade Linux is that they exemplify the very best practices in open source. Carrier Grade Linux is an open specification that 6 different Linux vendors have compliance with. This compliance delivers the promised value of open source: avoiding monopoly, delivering a level playing field and avoiding vendor lock-in. Funny thing that Red Hat is the only major Linux vendor that is not participating in the Carrier Grade Linux standards effort. I guess if you consider yourself the Microsoft of the Linux world, then you might falsely think that you ARE the standard. I like to believe that logic always prevails and Red Hat might do well to think through this premise: if you are NOT supporting the accepted standards than you must be NON-STANDARD!

What exactly does this collaboration amount to then? Good question. My guess is that  Red Hat is simply packaging its enterprise server together with Nokia’s Carrier Grade hardware and claiming to have a telecommunications solution. Last time I checked there were a lot of telecommunications solutions that are based on PowerPC processors and processors from MIPS licensees like Broadcom, Cavium and others. Umm. I wonder how those solutions can run “server” Linux? The takeaway here is that there is a big difference between “server” Linux and Carrier Grade Linux -  but with this announcement, Red Hat is trying very hard to pull the wool over this little fact.

I guess if you have a very rigid server architecture based strictly on an Intel-based processor and you don’t modify or customize the software at all, then it is probably reasonable to use an inflexible, rigid operating system that is not based on Telecommunications standards. For the rest of us, I think we’ll continue to drive best open source practices and participate in the Carrier Grade Linux standards effort. This collaboration allows companies to leverage Carrier Grade Linux across multiple processors and device types and thus delivers the true promise of open source; product re-use, no vendor lock-in and standards based.

Live from Amsterdam: Day 2 Observations from the 2006 Inaugural Open Source in Mobile Event

The audience was a little lighter today. I guess that’s to be expected since we are in Amsterdam and there just might be some other distractions this fun city has to offer.

Today’s sessions started out with a bang by continuing the fragmentation theme. The first two presenters were from .orgs focused on establishing standards in the mobile Linux industry: LiPS, (Linux in Phone Standards) followed by OSDL MLI, the Mobile Linux Initiative. These two .orgs communicated a noticeably different approach to solving the Linux mobile phone solution versus what we heard from the X Foundation yesterday. It was interesting to hear both standards representatives zero in on the fact the Telco industry, as it stands today, was defined by standards. The LiPS representative even posed the very question I was pondering: “How can you have a Linux mobile phone without telecom standards?” Anyone out there who can offer up a compelling answer?  It was clear from the LiPS and OSDL MLI presentations that they have defined their focus areas and have created standards initiatives that are very complimentary to each other. LiPS is focusing on the middleware and application layers. OSDL MLI is focusing on the kernel.

Nokia gave a presentation that highlighted  their  MaEmo project.  This project is a community designed around contributing to the open source stack of the Nokia 770.  Their solution uses the Gnome user interface. Speaking of Gnome, yesterday, I mentioned Gnome’s sponsorship of the event. I finally figured out why Gnome is at the conference: Gnome now has a new mobile initiative that is designed to provide a GUI, GTK, and gstreamer for smart phones.

During the course of the two days another common thread I heard was that open source software is not only “just good enough”, the common myth, but that it is “better” than proprietary RTOS solutions. These comments actually came from the handset manufacturers themselves. The presenter from Nokia claimed that Linux and the open source Linux software was of very good overall quality. The presenter from Panasonic said that he had 0 errors per 1000 lines of open source code vs. 20-30 errors with his internal proprietary software. Clearly this result is one of the driving factors for why companies are moving to Linux, not just for Mobile but for all vertical markets.

Needless to say, everyone in the industry is trying to establish their value. The concept of the value line came up in every discussion. However, there was not consensus to where the value line falls. Most opinions including OSDL’s, was that adding value below the line is really equivalent to forking the code and can have significant consequences. While some vendors want you to believe it can have significant value add, in the long run it can have detrimental consequences to staying current with the Linux community and remaining “open”.

The vast majority of mobile phones have more than one processor. One for base-band or modem communications and the other for application processing. There was a session where a handful of speakers from various software and hardware companies talked about single core solutions for mobile phones. It was clear that this single core solution is really targeted to the mid-to-low end feature phones and that designs for these phones are just now being done. Price is extremely important in these phones where the BOM must be controlled. Processors are faster now and can probably manage the modem control and application control areas without too much impact to performance. It’s the hard real time capability for Linux that will be a key success factor for how Linux will address this market. RT is paramount to the performance of these stacks. One solution discussed was by VirtualLogix (formerly Jaluna). They talked about their virtualization solution for Linux single-core phones. This solution essentially separated the modem control and the application control into different partitions using the RTOS to control the modem processes. We also heard from Purple Labs, a solution stack provider based in France.  They designed a stack specifically designed for mid-to-low end feature phones. They see a huge opportunity for Linux in this space. This solution appears to be yet-another- stack I’ve seen in the last two days. I think we’re now up to at least 8 different solutions stacks based on Linux.

As the event winds down, it is pretty evident momentum is building. There seems to be lots of VC money being thrown at small startups creating point solutions and all the semi-conductor vendors - ARM, TI, Freescale - are all positioning and investing in Linux. Plenty of initiatives are underway targeting mobile phones. But the one big takeaway for me was how everyone wants to lead. Every company or organization talked about taking the lead on this initiative or that project so therefore THEY must be THE leader.

Well, if everyone is leading, who is following?  If everyone is leading with a different solution, then it is no wonder we have fragmentation. As I see it, we are failing to galvanize on a particular solution, whether it be a solution for graphics, java or telephony. There is not one single big solution that we can all rally around. The fall out is that there is no real community driving toward interoperability and standards for mobile phones from a holistic perspective. But what we do have evolving is a community of small individual communities being built around the different implementations for each component of the solution stack.

Could the Mobile Phone be the Next PC?

Will 2007 be the year for mass adoption of Linux in smart phones? This question is the one on everyone’s minds here at the inaugural Open Source in Mobile Event. Taking place in Amsterdam today and tomorrow, this event brings together service providers, carriers, software and hardware vendors, ISVs and everyone else involved in the open source in mobile community. Day one just concluded and since I’m here I thought I’d share some observations that caught my attention.

Needless to say, as this is the inaugural event, my expectations were low. Much to my surprise though, the event has been well attended with over 100 paying attendees. Worth noting to anyone who doesn’t believe Linux will have an impact on the mobile phone market: given the level of attendees participating, I feel pretty safe in concluding that manufacturers are taking the opportunity in mobile Linux very seriously.

The conference topics mainly centered on business models, technology, and monetizing open source in Mobile. The speaker list included impressive representation from both well-established and emerging names in the industry. Some of the larger companies we heard from today included British Telecom, Motorola, Nokia, Panasonic, Sun and Vodafone.

After a quick scan of the audience, there appeared to be a lot more suits and ties than t-shirts. There were even a few attorneys on hand soaking in the data. Good thing because most of the questions from the audience dealt with sticky licensing issues. In particular Sun announced the open sourcing of Java ME, but could not explain under what license(s) it would be put into open source.

Now that you have the background details, let me cut to the chase with my takeaway observations:

Number One: Event Endorsement by the Open Source Gnome Project
I’ve been working in the embedded Linux space for nearly 6 years and have a lot of conferences under my belt; many that specifically address the mobile Linux space. One thing struck me right away that was noticeably different about this conference was that it was endorsed by the open source Gnome project. While Gnome is certainly a leading Linux desktop interface, this conference marks the first time I’ve ever seen or heard a desktop Linux.org endorse an open source mobile event. Could this step mean a trend is starting in the mobile phone space? Many of the comments I heard today would indicate that companies are already thinking this option through. Could the mobile phone be the next PC?  Interestingly, Motorola positioned the future mobile phone as becoming “the remote control for life.” This take certainly indicates that the MOT team thinks mobile phones will replace all other devices including cameras, watches, cell phones, MP3 players and possibly even the PC.  I’ll be keeping my eye on this potential trend.

Number Two: Widespread Discussion on Fragmentation of Open Source for Mobile Solutions
There are many niche players attempting to make their mark as key components of the software stack and several of them were in attendance today. One of the key issues discussed over and over again was the fragmentation that exists with open source for mobile solutions. When we talk about open source, most people think about the kernel. But really, the kernel is not where the fragmentation problem exists. Because the kernel is pretty straightforward and compatible, it won’t make that much difference if a phone is using 2.6.10 or 2.6.18.  The real fragmentation issue is with the application services layer that sits on top of the Linux OS. This point was obvious as there were at least three different “app services layer” vendors represented at the event. The challenge developers face is which graphical interface will they write to? Will there be a JVM and whose version will it be? What audio interfaces do they use? This fragmentation will hinder fast adoption of open source for mobile and the development of universal and portable applications that can run on any phone in any network. This issue is one of the biggest challenges open source in mobile faces compared to the closed environments of Microsoft and Symbian. 

Number Three: First Three Presenters Were All Members of the “X” Foundation
Another interesting observation was that the first three presenters, Vodafone, Panasonic and Motorola, are all members of the “X” foundation. This new foundation was announced last summer and consists of handset manufacturers and service providers. The foundation’s goal is to drive to a single common platform for open source in mobile phones. Ironically, this .org is attempting to address the usage of open source for mobile solutions, and yet, they themselves are not an “open” organization. Membership and contribution to the foundation is limited and closed to the community at this time. They did indicate it would be opened to other companies in the future. But why keep it closed?  One of the presenters mentioned that they wanted to keep membership small and limited to “companies that really understood the whole problem.” Are service providers and handset manufacturers the open source experts and thus the only ones qualified to drive the adoption of open source solutions?  Independent of this or any other group defining a standards-based open source stack, adoption is already happening. More than 20 million Linux-based phones are out there to prove that adoption is happening. One of the things that really interests me about the X foundation is that they don’t want to spend time on standards. They just want to submit code. One presenter even went as far to say that they are “bored” with standards. While I completely agree that standards specifications take to long to develop, they are still needed. Without them, we will have another point solution that cannot scale. If we only ‘submit code’ and do not have an interoperable standard in mind, then we are really not solving the interoperability problem and scalability problem. 

Number Four: Significant Efforts Driving Open Source for Mobile Are Underway
The final takeaway and big message of the day was that there are significant efforts going on and these efforts are driving open source for mobile phones. Momentum is increasing.  Many of the presenters today indicated that 2007 will be the year for open source in mobile phones. I’m on board with this assumption. However, I believe mobile phones will not be 100% open source. While we did hear from one vendor, First International Computer (FIC), that they now have a 100% open source stack with the exception of a communications driver or two, almost everyone unanimously agreed that the mobile phone solution will be a hybrid of both open and proprietary components built on a Linux platform. Or, in the case of Nokia, there may be open source applications that run on top of a closed operating environment. One thing that everyone agrees with? Open source is a growing influence on mobile phones and will have an even bigger impact on the solution in the future.