The sort of support you are talking about is exactly what is offered by
Montavista for Linux:
http://www.mvista.com/
As you can see from their homepage, it looked like Motorola wanted that sort
of support too!
Dave
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ian Mansfield [mailto:ian.mansfield@amplefuture.com]
> Sent: 14 September 2004 09:46
> To: keitai-l@appelsiini.net
> Subject: (keitai-l) Re: Embedded Linux Vs Symbian Vs T-Engine
>
>
> Personal Opinion....
>
>
> One of the huge advantages of Symbian is that it is backed by
> several major handset vendors. While Linux does have a vast
> number of developers working on it - they are volunteers, and
> have no commercial obligations to offer support when it is needed.
>
> What guarantee can you offer the network operator and content
> providers that a Linux bug will receive the necessary
> priority from its developers ?
>
> None.
>
> Now that may be acceptable to a programming geek on a backend
> server platform - but it is not acceptable in the consumer market.
>
> If a mass market handset has a software bug - then it needs
> to be fixed, and fixed NOW.
>
> If the handset vendor lacks the ability to compel the
> volunteer developers to provide a bug fix (because there
> might be something better on TV that night, or they have all
> run off to Burning Man for a party), then they run the risk
> of damaging their reputation and market share.
>
> The cost of that damage could easily outstrip the cost of
> licensing an OS that is backed up with commercial SLA's and
> service agreements.
>
> For that reason, I personally believe that for the consumer
> market - it is far safer to stick to using OS's that are
> backed by commercial service agreements and leave the geeky
> OS's to the smartphones where the users are more familiar
> with the flakyness (?) of complicated operating systems and
> are more forgiving when their handset crashes (after all,
> their PC probably crashes more often!).
Received on Tue Sep 14 17:07:21 2004