LiMo Platform and Mobile Linux
FOSDEM 2010

Hi, I’m Andrew.
asavory@apache.org
twitter.com/savs

Who, or what, is LiMo?

How many people have heard
of LiMo? How many people know what LiMo is?

LiMo is a Foundation

Foundations are good Neutral third
party Central location for code, resources Protection for legal issues Apache Software Foundation, Eclipse Foundation, Free Software Foundation, GNOME Foundation, Linux Foundation, Mozilla Foundation, Symbian Foundation, ...

LiMo is a platform (the
first truly open*, hardware-independent, Linux-based operating system for mobile devices) * open as in governance

Platforms are good The operating
system stack is a commodity layer* Reduce development and maintenance costs Decrease time to market / increase innovation Maemo on Debian, o2 Joggler on Moblin, Moblin on Fedora/SUSE/Ubuntu/Mandriva/... * i.e. becoming more alike / less differentiated, standardised; able to run on multiple hardware; the point of differentiation moving up the stack

LiMo is a diverse cross-
section of the mobile ecosystem

Diversity is good A key
metric of a healthy (open source) community Represent everyone’s views, not just “the driver” Must be coupled with clear and open governance LiMo members include chipset companies, handset manufacturers, network operators, software companies

Shipping matters

45 handsets and counting

The LiMo Platform

User interface Increasing commoditisation LiMo
“middleware” Linux kernel Some Implications of Software Commoditisation http://osdir.com/Article204.phtml

Challenges

FLOSS
FTW!
Open
or
Closed?

De bi a n GNU/L
i n u x f o r Mo bi le s v3. 5

Help us! Definitive project website
Readily identify the license(s) the code is under Easily downloadable source code As HTTP resource, including many years of archives! Bonus, nice to have: Roadmap, release history, links to issue tracker and SCM repository, up-to-date listing on ohloh.net

Crazy things we do* *
... but wish we didn’t have to Data-mine repositories and catalogues for useful stats e.g. GTK = $30m for us to build from scratch Automated pulls from upstream projects Read through every source file to check licensing

!"#$%&'%(#)*+,%-.,/%0&123,%!"3,/#,# ! !"#$"%&'(#)*"#+' ! ,-.'*/01'234456&&777085"$+89#:"08#;&%):"$+"+&;5%</010535='
! >$?'5"#@)++)*"'A+BC%"'D5"$'E89#:"'%):"$+"&:85?#);34'7B)*"#&59C%):'F8@B)$'$84):"'B+'B55#8*"F'C?'43"'.EG' ! H88%+' ! .,-.*/''234456&&7770;$908#;&%):"$+"+&8%F<%):"$+"+&%)C#B#?034@%='B$F'/0I''234456&&777085"$+89#:"08#;&%):"$+"+&%;5%< Compliance is hard work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please don’t make it harder!

The “F” word

“[...] this whole thing stinks
of people not liking Forking. Forking is important and not a bad thing at all. From my perspective, forking is why the Linux kernel is as good as it is.” - Chris DiBona “[...] the ability to fork is important, it keeps everyone honest, but actual doing a fork is a sign of failure on someone's part” - Greg Kroah-Hartman

Where an open mobile platform
is already using key open source projects of Mobile critical importance, there is direct economic value in Open Source constructive engagement with Economic Analysis the corresponding open source communities. LiMo Foundation White Paper August 2009 ™ ™ White Paper 1

The four merge strategies •
Here we define merge as bringing upstream open source changes back into internal code lines, and contribute as the process of offering internal feature enhancements and bug fixes back to the relevant open source community • Merge Never: Develop in isolation and never resync with upstream development • $40 million/283 FTEs per year • Merge Late Contribute Late: Acknowledge technical debt and resync at end • $20 million/141 FTEs per year • Merge Early Contribute Later: Continuous resync with upstream, commit later • $10 million/70 FTEs per year • Merge Early Contribute Early: Continuous resync with upstream and commit • $3.3 million/24 FTEs per year • In increasing order of potential for long-term cost reduction BUT with a catch: • Also increasing sophistication in organisation of integration infrastructure • Or “investment in absorptive capacity”

Software Supply Chain Management Cost
of upstream resync Closer integration with upstream innovation Community open source development codeline Greater sophistication required to manage MN integration activity MLCL With ME, the Resync vendor’s internal MECL (merge) dev branch is OSS with MECE Contribute upstream upstream later Time Product development cycle approx 2 years Software selection decision Product shipment made at this point made at this point

How to engage?

... build the business case
for structured / bilateral engagement with Open Source projects ... ... use a simple Memorandum of Understanding, our Industry Liaison Partner Agreement, and a Letter of Intent ...

“We don’t have an official
agreement that needs to be signed.” (But we can put one together if you need one.)

The Source Code

diff noun informal short for
difference . verb [ trans. ] Computing compare (files) in order to determine how or whether they differ.

$ du -sh upstream_diff_dir 86M
upstream_diff_dir

alsa-lib-1.0.16.diff gstreamer-0.10.22.diff libXdmcp-1.0.2.diff atk-1.24.0.diff gtk+-2.14.4.diff
libXext-1.0.99.1.diff bigreqsproto-1.0.2.diff inputproto-1.9.99.6.diff libXfixes-4.0.3.diff bluez-libs-3.36.diff ipkg-0.99.163.diff libXfont-1.3.3.diff bluez-utils-3.36.diff kbproto-1.0.3.diff libXft-2.1.13.diff cairo-1.8.0.diff libexif-0.6.16.diff libXi-1.2.99.1.diff compositeproto-0.4.diff libfontenc-1.0.4.diff libXinerama-1.0.3.diff damageproto-1.1.0.diff libICE-1.0.4.diff libxkbfile-1.0.5.diff dbus-1.2.3.diff libogg-1.1.3.diff libxml2-2.6.26.diff dbus-glib-0.74.diff liboil-0.3.14.diff libXmu-1.0.4.diff fixesproto-4.0.diff libselinux-2.0.71.diff libXpm-3.5.7.diff fontcacheproto-0.1.2.diff libsepol-2.0.37.diff libXrandr-1.2.3.diff fontconfig-2.6.0.diff libSM-1.1.0.diff libXrender-0.9.4.diff fontsproto-2.0.2.diff libtheora-1.0.diff libXres-1.0.3.diff freetype-2.3.7.diff libvorbis-1.2.0.diff libXt-1.0.5.diff GConf-dbus-2.16.0.diff libX11-1.1.99.2.diff libXtst-1.0.3.diff glib-2.18.2.diff libXau-1.0.4.diff libXv-1.0.4.diff gst-plugins-bad-0.10.0.diff libXcomposite-0.4.0.diff metacity-2.25.89.diff gst-plugins-base-0.10.22.diff libXcursor-1.1.9.diff ncurses-5.6.diff gst-plugins-good-0.10.13.diff libXdamage-1.1.1.diff tiff-3.8.2.diff

Working together

PLEASE HELP!

Thank you.