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SAN FRANCISCO - Concerned about fragmentation of Linux in the embedded world, the Embedded Linux Consortium last week proposed to its 124 member companies that a single unified specification be developed for the embedded version of the open-source operating system.
The move came at the Embedded Systems Conference here, even as embedded-software leader Wind River Systems Inc. touted FreeBSD as a more mature open-source Unix variant. One Wind River executive called FreeBSD "Linux's big brother."
The conflicting efforts suggest further fracturing ahead as engineers try to harness opensource software into a form more readily usable in their designs.
"One of the concerns we hear is, `Is embedded Linux going to fragment and go the way of Unix?'" said Inder Singh, chairman and chief executive officer of LynuxWorks Inc. (San Jose, Calif.). "Right now, each vendor approaches the Linux operating system in a slightly different way."
Avoiding the fate of Unix, which in the world of computing has splintered into multiple variants over the past 20years, is important, said Daya Nadamuni, senior analyst for Gartner Dataquest (San Jose, Calif.).
"I'm pleased to see the embedded Linux vendors working out a common API so that all the application vendors and middleware providers can write to it," she said. "Without that, you'd start to see the kind of fragmentation that always seems to occur with any operating systemin Unix, for example, and even in the desktop. Application portability and support of application development are crucial to growing the market opportunity, so it's important they move forward with this kind of effort."
The movement's genesis in a consortium populated by the major names in embedded Linux is also critical, Nadamuni said. "It's not like a single vendor trying to force their API as a de facto standard."
At a meeting ofthe Embedded Linux Consortium (ELC) board here early last week, Singh of LynuxWorks and seven other board members representing IBM, Lineo, MontaVista Software and Red Hat unveiled their plan to craft what they are calling the ELC Platform Specification. This unified spec would cover basic operating system services and provide a platform for embedded middleware and application software.
The proposed specification would be based on existing ones, such as Posix 1003.13, the Single Unix Specification and the Linux Standard...