Intel forms new Linux venture with Linux Foundation, LiMo & Samsung: Tizen

Editor: Andrew Flegg

As you'll no doubt have heard, Intel is forming a collaboration, in conjunction with a hardware vendor and hosted by the Linux Foundation, to produce a new Linux-based mobile OS. No, not MeeGo; this is "Tizen". The main difference is that the buzzword of "HTML5" is being used as the preferred/primary application development framework, rather than MeeGo/Symbian/Harmattan's Qt. Andrew Savory has an in-depth summary of the announcement:

In order for Intel to bring other companies on board, they needed to cut all ties with Nokia and make a concession by losing Qt. But if you're throwing out Qt, the value proposition of MeeGo needs to be reconsidered. Without Qt, MeeGo doesn't have the rich developer story - no APIs, SDK, documentation. You need an alternative.

MeeGo's stated selling point compared with, say, Android was its open development and governance. This was, however, never realised. Tizen seems not to be repeating this "mistake" (promising something they can't deliver) and participation is on an invite-only basis. That raises the question of Tizen's advantage compared with other HTML5-capable runtimes, such as Android, iOS or Windows.

Mer relaunched to take over from MeeGo

Editor: Andrew Flegg

Carsten Munk, Robin Burchell and David Greaves have relaunched Mer to provide a focused successor to MeeGo: How does the concept of a truly open and inclusive integration community for devices sound? After all if "upstream is king" - then contributions will end up the same place, no matter if it's Tizen, Maemo, MeeGo or openSUSE. Governance, deliverables and focus of Mer are being discussed. In your editor's opinion, the clearer definition of the "Core" of the project - delivering something which can boot and provides the basis of other, clearly defined, projects is something which MeeGo never got right.