Industry giants offer Linux consumer boost

The Consumer Electronics Linux Forum (Celf) has been officially established as an industry group dedicated to the advancement of Linux as an open source platform for consumer electronics devices.

By incorporating as a not-for-profit organisation, Celf said that it will be better able to fund development work and create relationships with other groups to further its goals.

The Forum was unofficially established in June 2003 by eight companies (Hitachi, Matsushita Electric Industrial, NEC, Royal Philips Electronics, Samsung Electronics, Sharp, Sony and Toshiba) to enhance and promote the use of Linux in digital consumer electronics products. Membership now totals more than 50 companies.

Celf maintains a collection of source code modifications for Linux, or 'patches', that tailor the operating system for use in consumer devices such as mobile phones, set-top boxes and personal media managers.

The first version of the patches was made available for download and review by the public in November 2003.

The Forum will be located in San José, California. Scott Smyers, former chairman of the organisation's steering committee, will serve as chairman of the Celf board of directors.

In June 2004 the organisation released Version 1.0 of the Celf specification and a reference implementation. The second plenary meeting and its first US technical conference will be held in San José at the end of January.