LiMo are building an open mobile middleware platform upon the Linux kernel, drawing from the best of open source and using many common components found in GNOME Mobile. The big challenge for mobile companies working with open source is how to be graceful in our interaction with upstream projects and how to ensure a reciprocal flow of innovation that benefits everyone. This presentation introduced the LiMo platform, talked about the challenges of building for mobile devices, and how we want to work with open source projects to make them more mobile in the future.

1. LiMo Platform and
Mobile Linux
FOSDEM 2010

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

3. Who, or what, is LiMo?

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

5. LiMo is a Foundation

6. 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, ...

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

8. 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

9. LiMo is a diverse cross-
section of the mobile
ecosystem

10. 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

11. Shipping matters

12. 45 handsets and counting

14. The LiMo Platform

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

19. Challenges

20. FLOSS
FTW!
Open
or
Closed?

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

22. 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

23. 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

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... please don’t make it harder!

26. The “F” word

27. “[...] 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

28. 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

29. 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”

30. 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

31. How to engage?

32. ... 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 ...

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

35. The Source Code

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

38. $ du -sh upstream_diff_dir
86M upstream_diff_dir

39. 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

40. Working together

42. PLEASE HELP!

43. Thank you.