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Novell Promotes the Moblin Open Source Community

Rick Cook

Rick Cook

Novell Inc. is making a major push toward the Moblin Open Source Project. In May, Novell announced that it would produce a product based on Moblin technology for OEMs and ODMs of netbooks. In addition, Novell has already started making substantial contributions to the Moblin Open Source Project Software Stack and will establish an open lab in Taiwan to help OEMs and ODMs incorporate Moblin technology into their products.

Although Novell joined the Moblin Open Source Community last fall, the May announcements represent a whole new level of involvement for Novell.

There were several reasons Novell wanted to take a bigger role in the Moblin Open Source Project, says Guy Lunardi, director of client preloads at Novell.

“It seemed it (the Moblin Open Source Community) was very well aligned with a lot of the activities that Novell was interested in,” says Lunardi, “to help Linux realize its full potential.”

“There were some more technical reasons that were influential as well.” One of those, Lunardi says was “the tremendous competencies of the Intel Atom platform.”

“That convinced Novell quickly that the Moblin project was something we wanted to be part of.”

Lunardi says Novell sees Intel's recent decision to turn control of the Moblin Open Source Project over to the Linux Foundation as a positive development.

“There's no way I see this as a divestment, quite the opposite actually. Intel continues to do a tremendous amount of work on Moblin technologies,” Lunardi says.

According to Mark Longwell, director of business development at Novell: “Intel is going full speed at this and seeing a lot of acceptance out in the market place.”

Lunardi says, “I think it shows a great maturity on Intel's part about open source for them to turn over the reins for Moblin Open Source Project to the Linux Foundation.”

One of the advantages of having the Linux Foundation in charge of the Moblin Open Source Project is that it helps alleviate concerns among competitors and others about Intel's dominant role in the project. “I am convinced this will give us a framework for competing interests and a level of confidence without having the perception that it is tightly controlled by a third party,” Lunardi emphasizes.

“I can think of no better home for the Moblin Open Source Project than the Linux Foundation,” Lunardi says. “They meet the criteria from a software and functional perspective.”

At the same time, Lunardi points out, Intel is continuing to play an active, important role in the Moblin Open Source Project.

“There's a vibrant mailing list where Intel engineers are very responsive. When Intel gets involved you get that knowledge and the know-how that ends up being applied to help developers gain traction very quickly. Intel has been there on the mailing list and they've been making experts available.”

The Moblin Open Source Project offers numerous opportunities for developers to get involved in writing software for the Moblin Open Source Project Software Stack. “Over 600 projects comprise the baseline of Moblin technology,” according to Lunardi. “We will work with OEMs to optimize their solution's look and feel and enhancements to the user interface.”

Novell is working on an offering based on the Moblin v2.0 Open Source Project Software Stack, which it intends to offer to developers of netbooks and other devices.

In addition, Novell is working on several projects to add to the Moblin Open Source Project Software Stack, including media management, window management and collaborative tools -- specifically its Evolution collaborative tool and the new Anjal email front end for Evolution .

Media management is another area where Novell feels it can contribute substantially to the Moblin project. “We want to provide choice to users in media management,” says Lunardi. “Users are probably going to have different preferences for dealing with media.” In part, he says because of the difference in screen real estate among Moblin technology-based devices. “It's about creating custom user interfaces that takes full advantage of Moblin technology's capabilities.”

“We want users with complex and dense media libraries to be able to use Moblin,” says Lunardi.

Another area where Novell is contributing to the Moblin Open Source Project Software Stack is in Windows management. “It's an area where Novell has been doing a huge amount of investment,” says Lunardi. The goal, he says, is to make “interaction across multiple applications as seamless and as user friendly as possible.”

To further the Moblin project, Novell has joined forces with Intel in a major effort to help Taiwanese manufacturers use Moblin technology in their devices. Novell will establish a Novell Open Labs group in Taiwan to provide assistance to manufacturers who want to offer Moblin technology-based products such as netbooks and Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) to their customers. Novell is also going to be working with the Taiwan Moblin Enabling Center (MEC) to validate designs using Moblin technology for compliance with the standards. The Moblin Enabling Center is a joint-venture between Intel and the Taiwan Institute for Information Industry.

“A huge amount of work has come out of Taipei,” Lunardi says. “The Taiwanese government has been assisting through their Moblin Enabling Center, which is a joint venture between Intel and the government. To meet the needs of OEMs Novell is opening a lab that will be complementary to open source ways. To help through osmosis, we will be sending our subject matter experts to Taiwan to work with the Moblin project effort.”

Throughout its efforts, Novell remains firmly committed to the open source community, quirks and all.

“The open source community has interesting characters at every corner,” Lunardi says. “The social aspect of open source is a critical reason for its success. We embrace that and we're going to continue to be opinionated, continue to be passionate about open source.”

Rick Cook has been writing about computers and high technology for more than 30 years. In that time he has written hundreds of articles for publications from Byte to TechTarget. His interests include operating systems, processor design, semiconductor fabrication, storage and applications. He is also the author of a number of light fantasy novels full of bad computer jokes.