By David Meyer
Monday, January 29 2007 09:34 AM
URL: http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/communications/0,39044192,61985322,00.htm

A mobile Linux coalition between several major handset manufacturers and operators has finally been christened.

The group was formed six months ago with the goal of creating an open-source platform for mobile phones. From Friday, it will be known as the LiMo Foundation. Its membership includes Motorola, NEC, Panasonic Mobile Communications, Samsung Electronics, NTT DoCoMo and Vodafone.

The LiMo Foundation should not be confused with the Linux Phone Standards (LiPS) Forum, which boasts participants such as manufacturers Texas Instruments, ZTE and Freescale, operators France Telecom (the owners of Orange), Telecom Italia and software vendors Trolltech, Palmsource Inc and McAfee.

Not unlike the LiPS Forum, the goal of the not-for-profit LiMo Foundation is to blend the "community-based development benefits of transparency, innovation and scalability with the best development practices from the mobile community to create an innovative new business model", according to a statement issued late last week.

The foundation intends to do this by providing an API (Applications Programming Interface) specification, architecture, references to open source code, new source code-based reference implementation components and specifications for referenced third-party software.