Enter yet another mobile platform, Tizen, but also the death of another, MeeGo. Today the LiMo Foundation and The Linux Foundation announced a new open source project, Tizen, to develop a Linux-based device software platform.
Hosted at The Linux Foundation, Tizen is a standards-based, cross-architecture software platform, which supports multiple device categories including smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, netbooks and in-vehicle infotainment systems.
According to a press release, Tizen combines the best open source technologies from LiMo and The Linux Foundation with the addition of a flexible standards-based HTML5 and Wholesale Applications Consortium (WAC) web development environment within which device-independent applications can be produced for cross-platform deployment.
The key here is HTML5, as well as WAC apps, according to a blog posted at MeeGo.com by Isad Sousou, director of Intel open source technology center. "This new project is first and foremost open source, and based on Linux," Sousou wrote, "so it begs the question: why not just evolve MeeGo?"
That's apparently what Intel plans on doing. Sousou writes that over the next couple of months, Intel will be working to ensure that MeeGo users and developer can easily transition to Tizen.
"LiMo Foundation views Tizen as a well-timed step change which unites major mobile Linux proponents within a renewed ecosystem with an open web vision of application development which will help device vendors to innovate through software and liberalize access to consumers for developers and service providers," said Morgan Gillis, executive director of LiMo Foundation, in a statement. "LiMo will maintain its focus on providing the industry with a broadly backed vendor- and service-neutral ecosystem grounded in the spirit of open and unconstrained opportunity that is embodied by Linux."
Initial release of Tizen is targeted for the first quarter of 2012, which could mean the first devices based on the platform would be ready by mid-2012.