I’m digesting this news right now, double checking for a late April Fool’s joke and will update as I get more information.
Update: This is no April Fools joke.
Intel’s Moblin has been handed over to the Linux Foundation.
Moblin has traditionally focused on Atom CPU’s for MID, smartphone and netbooks but this move will allow the Linux Foundation to open up the stack to other CPU and component vendors. In my eyes, its a move to position the OS away from Intel and right alongside Android and LiMo. As a brand, Moblin could become extremely important.
I do wonder how this affects the OS distributions that agreed to take it on for netbooks though. Here’s the Linux Foundation members list
Linux Foundation news
Update: Quote from ARSTechnica’s Ryan Paul:
I was initially puzzled by the vendor-neutral aspect of this transition for Moblin, because true vendor-neutrality seems like a counter-intuitive aim for a mobile platform that is fundamentally tied to Intel’s hardware. Zemlin explained that the Linux Foundation’s stewardship of the project will empower third-party contributors to expand the platform beyond its Intel-specific roots. He assures me that Intel sees value in making Moblin open to everyone—including companies that are leveraging Linux on competing processors, such as those based on the ARM architecture.
