Mobile Linux groups LiMo, LiPS merge

Open source industry consortium the LiMo Foundation announced it will absorb the activities and membership of the Linux Phone Standards Forum this month, effectively scuttling plans to create a formal standard for the mobile Linux platform. According to LiMo, the pooling of resources promises to accelerate the emergence of common mobile Linux specifications and implementations as well as support a host of new applications and services. Roughly a dozen LiPS Forum members from across the mobile ecosystem will now join the LiMo ranks--LiPS members including France Telecom/Orange, Huawei Technology, NXP Semiconductors, Purple Labs and Texas Instruments already signed on with LiMo as the entrance of rival organizations including the Google-led Open Handset Alliance exerted new competitive pressures and heralded an industry shift away from standardization concerns toward time-to-market acceleration.

In an interview with ZDNet, outgoing LiPs Forum head Bill Weinberg said "I don't know [whether the standardization process is now dead]. The outcome of work by organizations like LiMo, Android and others may end up creating a standard that is more formalized after the fact. There's a question of pace--standardization bodies tend to operate in a more deliberative and stately fashion, but commercial interests are interested primarily in having code to work with. The sense of urgency in the industry has to do with the feeling that other players are breathing down their necks. An injection of urgency can cause a change in course and a change in plans."

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