The Embedded Linux Consortium (ELC) will hold an open technical meeting tonight in San Francisco, during which the two-year-old organization will move beyond its initial role of primarily evangelizing the adoption of Embedded Linux, to one of creating a unified Embedded Linux “platform specification”. The idea for the ELC Platform Specification was initially put forward approximately a year ago. The ELC Platform Specification is intended to “initially cover basic OS services that must be supported in any compliant Embedded Linux system”, according to a whitepaper published today on the ELC's website.

Subsequent to last April's unveiling of a plan to begin developing Embedded Linux standards, the ELC's board of directors commissioned the creation of a comprehensive intellectual property agreement (IPA), something which the board felt was needed in order to provide the required legal framework for embarking on standards development. The resulting 9-page Embedded Linux Consortium IPA is now available for members to review. (Hopefully, the ELC technical specs will be easier to digest!)

Michael Tiemann, Red Hat's CTO and a member of the ELC's board of directors, will moderate tonight's meeting. A key goal for the meeting is to form both general and special-interest working groups, which will develop APIs (application program interfaces) for both the core platform and selected additional OS services. Possible areas of consideration, beyond the core platform requirements, include remote network control, real-time, security, high availability, web-enabled wireless, GUI /Java and multimedia. The ELC s intent is to create new APIs where no suitable standard exists.

Presumably, the ELC will coordinate its efforts with groups such as the Open Source Development Lab, which recently announced its own working group to develop a Carrier Grade Linux platform specification.

What will the platform spec include?

In the announcement last April of its intention to develop a unified ELC Platform Specification, the ELC stated that the goal of the project was to “initially cover basic OS services that must be supported in any compliant embedded Linux system, [and] bring together the best of the Linux Standard Base with relevant portions of the POSIX specifications and the Single UNIX Specification as a starting point to scope the functionality of the platform, . . . and also take into account current Linux practices and APIs to form a robust platform for embedded systems — one that the ELC believes will be supported by all major embedded Linux developers and distributors and sought by embedded Linux consumers.”

Each prospective new ELC working group will be asked to submit a brief proposal according to a working group proposal outline. Basically, submissions will include the proposed project's title, the names of companies and individuals interested in leading and participating in the project, brief statements of background, mission, and goals, and a suggested project plan.

The ELC also intends to foster the development of test suites for use in validating compliance with the ELC's specifications. The test suites will likely be open source projects, used both for self-test by vendors and for third-party testing by recognized certification test labs. Compliant products will become eligible to carry a unique trademarked logo which the ELC will also develop.

An ELC Platform Specification FAQ

To support this evolution from an evangelical role to that of standards development, the organization today released an ELC Platform Specification FAQ, which includes the answer to questions such as . . .

• Why is a unified standard necessary for embedded Linux?
  
• Why has the ELC decided to get involved with standards?
  
• Why did it take so long to get to this point, given the ELC first released its proposal for an ELC Platform Specification in April 2001?
  
• What is the ELC Intellectual Property Agreement (IPA) and why is it necessary for the ELC to carry forward with an ELC Platform Specification?
  
• How will the ELC's structure change?
  
• What components will be included in the ELC Platform Specification?
  
• In addition to the core specification, what other potential APIs might the ELC develop?
  
• In addition to specification development, in what other standards-related work will the ELC be involved?
  
• If the ELC outsources its test suite development and/or conformance testing, who will get the contract?
  
• What makes the ELC initiative immune to the fate of other standards targeted at the embedded market, such as POSIX?
  
• What potential obstacles exist that could impact establishment of the ELC Platform Specification?
  
• How long will it take to achieve a platform specification that developers may rely upon?
  
• If a platform standard can be developed, what is the expected result in the marketplace?

In conjunction with the kickoff of the ELC's standardization effort a set of documents have been published which elaborate on various aspects of the ELC Platform Specification project. The documents are available for free public review . . .

• ELC Destiny Meeting Press Release
• ELC Platform Specification White Paper
• ELC Platform Specification FAQ
• ELC Platform Specification Industry Testimonials
• Working Group Proposal Outline
• Intellectual Property Agreement (for review/approval by corporate counsel)

Given the position Embedded Linux now occupies in the multibillion dollar embedded software market (Embedded Linux is generally considered to be among the top three developer choices), the ELC's platform specification effort is certain to attract a lot of interest.

Not surprisingly, the ELC reports that over 100 RSVPs have now been received for tonight's kickoff meeting. The attendees are expected to include representatives of many of the world's largest and most influential software, semiconductor, and electronics companies: HP, Hitachi, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Motorola, Panasonic, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, Texas Instruments, Toshiba, and Wind River (alphabetically listed).

Tonight's meeting takes place in Moscone South room 200, at 6:30 pm.

 
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