FAQs

Q. Why has ACCESS adopted Linux and open source software as the basis for the ACCESS Linux Platform?
A. For a variety of reasons:

• Our customers want it—open source provides greater transparency and a high level of innovation
• It allows us to focus our engineering efforts on adding value in applications, user experience, and middleware, which are our key differentiators in the market
• Cost savings because we do not need to continue development on our own kernel
• Linux is a highly developed, robust, and fully-featured operating system capable of meeting any future needs for phone platforms
• Linux is capable of supporting a broader range of hardware platforms
• Linux-based systems enable quicker time to market with new hardware

Q. How is ACCESS contributing to the open source community?
A. From the outset, ACCESS has been committed to being a participating and contributing member of the open source community. We contribute in a variety of ways:

• By giving back technology to the community—we recently released the “Hiker” project as open source code, which includes a number of useful application framework components; we’ve previously released projects such as libsalfs and OpenBinder
• By contributing back patches and fixes it has developed for open source projects—we’ve been active participants in projects like BlueZ, Eclipse and YAFFS, among others
• By bringing in a new group of developers into the Linux community
• By offering a complete turnkey mobile phone solution based on Linux—one we hope will help promote the use of Linux in the mobile phone industry, and help grow a thriving third-party developer ecosystem in the mobile device space
• By working with standards organizations, such as the Linux Phone Standards Forum and Open Source Development Labs, and with our partners, to help reduce fragmentation among embedded Linux-based systems
• By generally promoting and encouraging the use of Linux and open source

Q. What is the ACCESS Linux Platform?
A. The ACCESS Linux Platform is a fully integrated, open, flexible and commercial grade Linux-based platform designed for smartphones and mobile devices. The ACCESS Linux Platform combines the best-in-class open source components, such as GTK+, BlueZ and SQLite, with proven mobile technologies from the portfolios of PalmSource and ACCESS.

Q. How will the ACCESS Linux Platform be implemented?
A. It largely consists of a middleware layer—some portions of which have been released as the “Hiker” applications framework—on top of the Linux kernel, as well as a suite of accompanying applications. A small portion—specifically, the Linux Security Module—resides in the kernel, and has been released under the GPL v2 license, also as part of the “Hiker” application framework.

Q. Does this mean the ACCESS Linux Platform will be open sourced?
A. We expect that we'll be continuing to contribute some of our technologies to the open source community as development proceeds, as we have already done with Hiker, libsqlfs and OpenBinder. The user-visible parts of the ACCESS Linux Platform (user interface, PIM applications, etc.) and some parts of the middleware will be a separate software layers on top of Linux, and will not be released as open source.

Q. Will you enable developers to port or write "native" Linux applications that run under the ACCESS Linux Platform?
A. Yes. Developers will be able to write applications using standard Linux system calls, GTK+, BlueZ and Gstreamer APIs, etc. Developers will also be able to take advantage of the many development tools that exist in the open source community to address their needs as well.

Q. Will you work with mobile standards efforts?
 A. ACCESS is committed to working with the community on mobile standards for open source and to reducing fragmentation in the mobile space. We are founding members of the Linux Phone Standards Forum (LiPS) and the OSDL Mobile Linux Initiative, and are leading participants in both. We are members of the GNOME Foundation Advisory Board and also participate in a variety of other organizations such as the Consumer Electronics Linux Forum and Eclipse.

Q. Will THE ACCESS Linux Platform be able to run on a variety of Linux distributions (i.e. standard versions of Linux distributed by other companies)?
A. The ACCESS Linux Platform has been designed to be generally “kernel-agnostic”, so it’s portable to a range of Linux distributions, as long as they are at an appropriate release level (2.6.16 or later) and configured for use on mobile devices.

Q. Does that mean you'll be offering your ACCESS Linux Platform layer for sale to users?
A. Most mobile devices are sold as complete solutions, so the most likely scenario is that the ACCESS Linux Platform would be bundled into devices by hardware companies. We’ll be making a software development kit freely available along with the ACCESS Linux Platform’s general release.

Q. What types of devices will the ACCESS Linux Platform support?
A. The ultimate design target for the ACCESS Linux Platform is phones and other mobile devices. We think the flexibility of Linux and open source will allow our software to run on a wide variety of target hardware.

Q. What will be the business model for the ACCESS Linux Platform?
A. We plan to continue with the same business model as today—third-party developers will be able to create programs royalty free. We charge hardware licensees to include our proprietary software in their devices.

Q. When will the ACCESS Linux Platform be released?
A. We’re on track to make the ACCESS Linux Platform generally available in the first half of 2007. In the meantime, we’ve been providing key licensees and developers with early versions of the code to enable them to get a jump on their development and ensure that what we have is working for them.

Q. Will I be able to upgrade my current Garnet™ OS device to the ACCESS Linux Platform?
A. We'll know if this is possible once the ACCESS Linux Platform is finished. In general, licensees have been reluctant to offer operating system upgrades on any mobile platform because they don't sell well—the people most interested in upgrading their OS also tend to upgrade their hardware as well.

Q. Will existing Garnet OS applications continue to run on the ACCESS Linux Platform?
 A. Yes, the ACCESS Linux Platform includes an emulation layer, Garnet VM, which allows properly written Garnet OS 68k applications to run on future versions of the operating system.