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April 2, 2009

Intel said today it is transferring over its mobile Linux initiative to the Linux Foundation (LF) in an effort to stir up greater interest in the Linux community.

LF's executive director Jim Zemlin said the Foundation will run Moblin's developer events beginning April 8 in San Francisco, and it will host Moblin's infrastructure and its various forums.

Zemlin added that Intel mobile developers will still remain on the Moblin Project.

He also said that Intel has turned to his organization because it has a solid track record of being a place where "unbiased development" can take place.

The Forum draws members from hardware, software and end users who can help accelerate development and overall adoption. Moblin could certainly use some help from the Linux community.

However, Moblin has recently suffered a lot from what looked like a severe lack of resource prioritization and publicity from an organization whose primary concern is making chips and hardware.

Based on Intel's Atom CPU, the idea is to get Moblin on laptops, netbooks, mobile devices like phones and smartphones and on in-car systems.

"The very first incarnation of Moblin on Ubuntu has been unsuccessful in creating a Linux community push," said Intel's director of Linux and open-source strategy Dirk Hohndel.

Now the move to the Linux Foundation looks like Intel's latest try at an on-going mission to gain broader community backing from the Linux movement. It comes on the coat tail of its latest release of Moblin 2 four months ago.

Moblin has been running since 2006, but one year into the project it made the critical decision to switch Linux kernels from Ubuntu to Fedora and adopt new admin tools, graphical user interface and Linux middleware.

Zemlin added "Intel has finally realized that it isn't going to think of every big idea. This is a new channel where it can certainly attract the entire community of OEMs, OSVs and ISVs. For Intel, it's a win-win."

"Now that the Linux Foundation is at the steering wheel, and as the Moblin project continues to evolve, expect to see some new and interesting mobile devices that blend good design and software reliability," said Zemlin.

Source: Intel.

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