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.