The Gnome Foundation has launched the Mobile & Embedded Initiative (GMAE) and a proposal for an OS architecture that can be used on mobile devices.
Reading through all the details it looks like its bringing Maemo, OpenMoko and Canonical (Ubuntu) together which is a good sign that the existing partners, including Canonical who are members of Intel’s MIDIA alliance, want to work together on a common platform and want to share ideas. Here’s the mission statement from the group.
- Increase community and commercial visibility of GMAE technology and participating organisations.
- Co-ordinate investment in the GTK+ and GNOME platform, documentation and developer tools.
- Increase development focus on the “mobile experience”, particularly the integration of GNOME desktop and GMAE technology.
- Facilitate healthy development collaboration between participating organisations, the GNOME community and related projects; and between GNOME platform, desktop and GMAE developers.
- Pursue standardisation opportunities for the platform, and potentially at the user experience level.
- Ensure that Software Freedom is a reality beyond the desktop, and available in the hands of users around the world.
This diagram from Intel’s IDF presentations, shows nicely where GMAE fits in. Its a core library set, and doesn’t include an interface architecture. This makes sense as it will probably target screen sizes from 2-7 inches, touch and no-touch. The diagram shows the MID Linux framework and the GMAE stack on the bottom right.
To be honest, the architecture is difficult to understand. I’ve ben working with *nix systems for over 20 years so most of it fits into place for me but I can imagine that most readers have lost interest by this point!
Forget the technical details, what it really means is that nearly all the players in the mobile Linux ‘arena’ are now talking to each other and working together. This is another indication of the importance of mobile devices. Business are starting to position themselves around the technology now.
A nice report is available at LinuxDevices. GMAE info from Gnome here.
