Linux gadget to replace the clock radio?, Jun 18, 2007

Chumby, a venture-backed San Diego startup, is readying a soft, leather-covered Linux-powered gadget conceived as an Internet-era replacement for clock and table radios. Expected to ship in "early summer," pending FCC approval, the "Chumby" device features open, hackable hardware, software, and yes, "outerware" APIs.

Leaders of Microsoft Corp.'s strategy to make its products more interoperable with competitive technologies said the company still hopes to strike a Linux pact with Red Hat Inc. similar to the partnerships it's forged with Linux vendors Novell, Xandros and Linspire.

Mark Shuttleworth made news in 2002 when he fulfilled a lifelong ambition and became the first South African into space, paying US$20 million to be a civilian cosmonaut on an eight-day flight aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. In 2004, he founded Ubuntu Linux to bring the operating system to people around the world. He is also the founder of HBD Venture Capital and the non-profit Shuttleworth Foundation.

The third version of the GNU General Public License (GPL) won't be released until the end of June. Yet, already, it is proving one of the most controversial developments ever in the free and open source software (FOSS)communities.

When Linspire 6.0 is released next month, it will include the fruits of the recently announced marriage between Linspire and Microsoft. Linspire CEO Kevin Carmony says he has been in talks with Microsoft for about a year and a half before reaching an agreement.

Christy Wyatt, VP of market development at Motorola, said Linux should be advancing more quickly to support mobile devices. "Linux will take a significant--I'm not allowed to say 'dominant'--market share of mobile phone operating systems," she predicted. Motorola expects 60% of its phones will use a version of embedded Linux "in a short time," Wyatt said.

With all these attacks on the strawman argument that I'm somehow suggesting that Ubuntu will make a patent deal with Microsoft, I can't help but notice that Shuttleworth didn't rule out working with Microsoft.

 View older news this year:
 View news from other years: 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999