Open Source winning the race in mobile product development

Companies like Wake3 and Funambol are starting to use open-source in
the development of software for mobile computing devices. Open-source
seems to be the perfect conduit to bring iPhone type browsing and
e-mail to handheld devices. During a meeting of the Mobile Monday
Silicon Valley group associates of Wake3, Funambol and Wind River noted
the rise of open-source software on handsets. Wake3 is bringing the
open-source WebKit mobile Web browser to Windows Mobile systems.

MobileCrunch » Mobile Computing catching Wind with Open Source Sails

This is why it is so important when Google gets involved in this kind
of initiatives. If you are creating these systems and you don’t go Open
Source, and Google does -thus creating and incentivizing a huge and
growing community of Open Source developers- how do you know that your
systems won’t get backward compatibility problems? Are you willing to
stay out of the game that Google and a huge percentage of developers
and therefore companies will be in?

It doesn’t mean that Google will win, but surely means that Open Source is “winning” already.

As things go, proprietary systems development don’t have much future,
neither in computing, genetics, or almost anything else. (car/plane
manufacturing and other sectors are yet exceptions due to the high
entry costs to these industries)

Unless your product is impossible to reverse engineer and upgrade/improve by the OS movement, forget it about “going it alone.”

January 11, 2008 · Filed Under Analysis, Interesting tidbits, Internet, Technology

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