[SVHMPC] linux phone standard

[Matthew S. Hamrick]

Well... I used to work for PalmSource, one of the LiPS founding  
members. I've been trying to find something nice to say about LiPS  
for the last 24 hours and the best I can come up with is, "It's not  
Microsoft."

But yeah... my impression has always been that some of the companies  
involved (PalmSource) always believed that the value of their  
offering was based in the software. I would argue that the value of  
PalmOS is not in PalmOS itself, but in the community of users and  
developers that surrounded it. Motorola is used to dealing with  
proprietary mobile OSes and is only slowly coming to internalize some  
of the benefits of open source. So... my take on this is... the guys  
involved have a mental model of how successful products are built,  
and it involves dealing with "the" software group. These businesses  
have processes based on a risk model that puts the software group in  
a distant location from the hardware group.

In my experience, companies that pay dogmatic attention to API  
standards outside of customer requirements don't last long (Posix and  
Win32 being possible exceptions.) Companies that pay close attention  
to customer requirements spend more of their time solving their  
customer's problems than going to meetings to discuss which options  
of which API calls will be supported.

LiPS was formed by a group of software companies who, when given a  
kernel, a process model, a framebuffer device driver or two, and GTK,  
couldn't figure out how to make a compelling product, much less a  
platform. The LiPS guys will tell you that in order to create a  
development community, you've got to have a consistent API for  
developers to work with. I've always argued that given a compiler, an  
emulator, prototype hardware, a JTAG connector and enough stock  
options and coffee, skilled engineers can make anything work. What is  
difficult is for small, innovative companies to release their  
products in a market dominated by a few powerful players with long  
buying cycles.

This is not to say that LiPS is irrelevant, just that as an ISV, I  
just don't see why it's that interesting.

-Just my $0.02
-Cheers!
-Matt H.

On Jun 12, 2007, at 8:22 AM, Paul A. Lambert wrote:

>
>
> On Jun 12, 2007, at 6:53 AM, mtd wrote:
>
>> hello,
>>
>> it seems that LiPS group tries to make linux phone specifications.
>>
>> http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070611-linux-phone-standards-
>> group-to-publish-specifications.html
>
> Yes .. the "specifications"  are now available:  http://
> www.lipsforum.org/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=54
>
> These are largely overviews, some doxygen output, and some header
> files.  No code.  You need to be a member to get the code :-(
>
> API standards are difficult to enforce, but could be useful to help
> align some of the most basic services for a phone (like the phone
> book).  These specifications will be used for industry developed
> 'closed' phones.   The 'open' community will need to produce similar
> parallel work.... not as APIs, but as code :-)  The LiPS documents
> could server as an interesting starting point for some designs.
>
> Paul
>
>>
>> -- 
>> Martin Tomasek
>>
>>
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> Paul A. Lambert
> CTO, PicoMobile Networks, Inc.
> 256 Gibraltar Drive, Suite 108
> Sunnyvale, CA, 94089
> cell: +1-650-787-9141
>
>
>
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