Open source industry consortium the LiMo Foundation announced a new partnership with the GNOME Foundation, the nonprofit behind the GNOME free software project. Developed for Linux and Unix-based operating systems, the GNOME desktop is updated twice each year, and is now deployed across millions of homes, small businesses and corporate settings worldwide; it includes a complete development environment for related applications. GNOME Mobile software components including Glib, GTK+, D-Bus, GStreamer and BlueZ are incorporated into Releases 2 and 3 of the Linux-based LiMo Platform; the two organizations will continue to collaborate on open-source development, with the LiMo Foundation becoming a member of the GNOME Foundation's Advisory Board and GNOME serving as an Industry Liaison Partner for LiMo.
It remains to be seen whether the GNOME partnership will boost flagging developer interest in the LiMo Platform. According to a survey published in April by research firm Ovum, more than four fifths of developers are either creating applications for Apple's iPhone platform or planning to do so, with Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone and Symbian also prominent on coders' collective radar--however, just 30 percent of developers say they plan to support LiMo, Palm's webOS and other emerging operating systems outside of the top five.
For more on the LiMo/GNOME partnership:
- read this release
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