The recent months have been dark days indeed for the Palm OS, especially for its spiritual successor, codenamed Access Linux Platform (
ALP). Palm is letting its license to the oft-delayed OS
expire this December, and we haven't heard of too many device manufacturers stepping in its place. The good news is that Access-owned PalmSource hasn't been just sitting around a doing nothing, and they recently hosted a one day mini-conference at LinuxWorld to show off their wares so far. Apparently the core OS is fairly completed, and PalmSource is mainly working on the bundled applications that will ship with the OS. Classic Palm OS emulation is said to work perfectly well, even with the requirement by the OS to scale those 320 x 320 native applications to ALP's preferred QVGA touchscreen resolution. There were plenty of
Haier N60 flip-phones on hand running the chosen res, along with a few prototypes with VGA screens and a keyboard -- a good sign of things to come. Unfortunately, the only pics allowed were of the developer tools running a virtualized version of ALP in Ubuntu -- a boon to developers, but no device-based eye candy for us. The biggest enhancement so far is multitasking afforded by the Linux base, though sexy features in the NetFront browser, new HotSync interoperability standards, and a newfound return to Palm OS looks of yore seem quite popular as well. In fact, with the OS's ability to be skinned with SVG graphics, Palm could conceivably make a branded version of the OS that would be quite familiar to old users, and dub it the Palm OS 6 we've always wanted. PalmSource says they're still on track to deliver the OS to licensees at the end of the year, with the first ALP products finally emerging next spring.
[Via
Brighthand
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Donald C. Kirker @ Aug 22nd 2006 9:33PM
I don't believe Palm's PalmOS license expires this December. I believe that it expires in December of 2009. I think that Palm will be cutting financial support to PalmSource for ALP in December because PalmSource did not meet some of Palm's milestones (or whatever they called it).
THE PALMOS LICENSE LASTS UNTIL DECEMBER 2009. PALM RENEWED IT AT LAST YEAR'S PALMSOURCE DEVCON!
Here is the pressrelease from PalmSource: http://www.palmsource.com/press/2005/052405_palmonepalmos.html
I am pretty sure that what i have said above is accurate.
Donald C. Kirker @ Aug 22nd 2006 9:38PM
From http://www.1src.com/scripts/show/1642-Palm__PalmSource__and_Palm_OS_Linux.html:
Reading page 21 reveals a few important details. Palm, Inc. will continue to license the Palm OS from ACCESS/PalmSource until December 2, 2009. If you have read some of the early news posts on this report, you may have incorrectly read that Palm’s license of Palm OS ends on December 2, 2006. This is simply not true. What really happens on December 2 of this year is that Palm makes a license payment to ACCESS. Per the terms of the license agreement that was reached last year, Palm is relieved “of [their] obligation to make minimum royalty payments under the license agreement after calendar year 2006.” Palm still gets to use Palm OS 5/Garnet until December 2009 and with the information we have on hand, gets to use Garnet essentially free for the years 2007 – 2009. Further, Palm is currently “in negotiations with PalmSource to expand our development and distribution rights to the current version of the Palm OS.” I want to be clear about this: Palm is still going to release new products, and some of those new products will continue to use Palm OS 5/Garnet. This is not only stated in the 10-K report, but also by Jim Christianson, Palm’s Director of Product Communications, in a statement he made to PalmAddict. Additionally, we know that Palm has recently appointed Bill Coleman to its board of directors. Mr. Coleman was the vice present of system software for Sun Microsystems. You can read the entire Palm press release here.