The mobile software world is evolving at a rapid rate buoyed by
the infusion of open source principles, methodologies, philosophies
and licensing. While this is exciting and invigorating, it is also
giving rise to a number of issues - some new, while others give us
a sense of "déjà-vu".
Déjà-vu all over again
One example of the latter case is how fragmentation is playing
out in the mobile industry today - largely a consequence of varied
approaches to platform licensing and governance. Fortunately, there
are forward-thinking organizations in the mobile industry driving
initiatives that hold the potential to break the cycle of
fragmentation within the mobile ecosystem.
See also:
Electronics Weekly's
Open Source Engineering blog
Fragmentation occurs when there are multiple inconsistent
versions of a single platform causing an inability to develop
applications that can directly, or with limited reconfiguration to
address variances in form factor, run across multiple devices that
are ostensibly based upon the same software platform.
Within the desktop computer industry, it is widely believed that
the biggest hurdle to desktop Linux adoption was fragmentation -
more precisely, the fragmented communities, who were each using a
different flavour of Linux (Red Hat, SUSE, Gentoo, Ubuntu etc).
Given that these flavours are not uniform in nature, PC vendors
are unable to predict their behaviour and have been reluctant to
adopt them.
For a long time, operating system fragmentation has also been
the Achilles' heel of the mobile industry - hindering innovation
and preventing the democratisation, widespread adoption and use of
the mobile Internet.
Applications must be ported from one device to another,
translated from one language to another, and even customized for
specific mobile operator needs. Once a developer builds an
application, it is often a further challenge to get it to run on
enough phones to create a commercially viable addressable
market.
A handful of mobile platforms
While it is not realistic to envisage a single operating system
for all mobile devices -n or would one wish to create an OS
stranglehold similar to Microsoft's position in the PC marketplace
- it is essential for the mobile industry to coalesce on a handful
of mobile platforms and this process has already started.
The industry has finally come to realize that while proprietary
and vertically integrated systems are very good at addressing
niches, the only way to unleash innovation is through open,
independent and collaboratively developed industry platforms.
See also:
How openness and Linux are unlocking innovation [Part 1]
This has resulted in the formation of a number of consortia
offering a variety of "open" operating systems and development
environments, each promising to be the solution that can deliver
exceptional ROI for developers. While on the surface, these
organizations appear to be operating in the same way and delivering
similar outputs, there are subtle but critical nuances in their
governance, collaboration and licensing model that highly impacts
their ability to solve fragmentation. In other words, the devil
lies in the details!
It is now fully acknowledged that focusing on common platform
technologies alone will not guarantee successful management of
fragmentation; instead, a well defined infrastructure incorporating
a strong and sophisticated IPR policy and platform licensing is
required to ensure broad adoption by the various constituents of
the mobile value chain while preventing forking and inconsistency
in future releases.
Copyleft
For fragmentation to be controlled, a strong copyleft policy is
a prerequisite, as it obliges users of the platform to contribute
fixes and optimizations before the platform is commercialised.
Another key element in combating fragmentation is compliance
testing which ensures that the right to distribute a platform is
limited to compliant implementations. However, to be effective, it
is also essential that compliance regimes are built from day one
and not as an afterthought.
While platform coalescence is a great way of addressing
fragmentation, it is unfortunately not a short term strategy.
Rather, it will take the industry some time before it settles on a
handful of platforms. In the meantime, standard runtimes and web
technologies can serve as the bridge that developers use to reach
the billions of mobile devices in the market.
Most web developers are already familiar with HTML, CCS and
JavaScript and a high proportion of mobile devices feature browsers
that can support these technologies. This means that the upfront
time and capital investment for developers will be negligible while
the scale achieved will offer them successful returns. Industry
platforms will again play an essential enabling role by providing
support for a wide variety of development environments and standard
runtimes.
BONDI
Even the Web runtime space was highly fragmented until the
advent of OMTP's BONDI initiative, whose aim is to consistently and
securely open up access from web applications to device and network
resident capabilities. BONDI is defining the key mobile interfaces
which are currently not standardised, but present the best
opportunities for developers to provide great mobile web services.
By enabling access in a consistent manner to these interfaces,
BONDI is providing the developer with the ability to produce new
web applications which will be capable of running across different
devices and platforms.
In the mobile space, ensuring compatibility and interoperability
across a broad diversity of platforms is a real nightmare for
developers and as a result, is impeding true innovation.
Convergence around a few common platforms will no doubt reduce the
burden of development, maintenance and support for developers.
However, well defined licensing and IPR policies as well as
support for multiple application development frameworks will be the
key elements that determine an industry platform's ability to
address fragmentation.
The broad adoption of mobile standards such as BONDI will enable
mobile operators and OEMs to manage their device portfolios more
efficiently, ensuring that key applications can be supported
consistently across all of them.
Consumers will benefit from a more diverse range of applications
and more choice of devices while application developers can ensure
that their applications work across different device platforms and
operating systems, helping them get the maximum value from their
investments.
Morgan Gillis is executive director ofLiMo Foundation
, an industry consortium dedicated to creating the first truly
open, hardware-independent, Linux-based operating system for mobile
devices.