[SVHMPC] linux phone standard

michael at michaelshiloh.com michael at michaelshiloh.com
Tue Jun 12 23:06:37 CEST 2007


Really well put, Matt. I agree with your analysis, and like you, for the past
24 hours have been trying to figure out why this doesn't seem like such a big
deal. You have nicely expressed my feelings.

Michael



On Tue, 12 Jun 2007, Matthew S. Hamrick wrote:

> 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




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