Android Scores Last in Open Governance Index

Vision Mobile recently released a report about different open source projects analyzing their openness via their Open Governance Index. The full report (45-pages) examines: Open source cultural roots and working upstream vs downstream Open source licenses vs governance models Analysis and classification of governance models In-depth reviews of Android, Qt, Symbian, MeeGo, Mozilla, WebKit, Linux and Eclipse Best practices in creating an open source project The governance index is not only based on the percentage of source code that is open, but on the whole software development including the transparency of the decision making-process, the involvement of the community in all aspects of the project,  compliance requirements and more. There are a total of 13 metrics accross 4  area of governance: Access: availability of the latest source code, developer support mechanisms, public roadmap, and transparency of decision-making Development: the ability of developers to influence the content and direction of the […]

NXP to release “Internet of Things” source code

Up to now, mainly people were using the Internet, but now things connect to the internet without human beings intervention for data collection (sensors) in order to improve the efficiency of different systems, this is what is called the “Internet of Things”. Watch IBM introduction to the Internet of things if you are not familiar with the concept. NXP recently announced the JenNet-IP software will be available under an open-source licence in Q4 2011. JenNet-IP is an ultra-low-power, IEEE 802.15.4-based wireless connectivity network layer software stack. Key features of the JenNet-IP networking software include: Highly robust, easily scalable, self-healing tree network proven at over 500 nodes Proven in a variety of residential and industrial applications, including asset management, lighting, solar and building control IP-based networking to enable the Internet of Things Gateway or non-gateway options for connection to the Internet or stand-alone operation Easy-to-use, elegant and extensible SNAP object-oriented API […]

Ayuda Splash Digital Signage Player Becomes Open Source

Ayuda Media Systems announced OpenSplash – a free, open source digital signage player at ISE 2011. Press Release Excerpt: Ayuda Media Systems (“Ayuda”) announced today at ISE 2011 that it will be open sourcing its Splash Digital Player. Dubbed “OpenSplash”, it is a free, multi-platform open source player that can be driven by any content management and scheduling system. “Offering a free, open source media player will enable a new wave of innovation in the signage industry” said Andreas Soupliotis, President & CEO of Ayuda. “There are a multitude of software vendors in the space that basically all do the same thing – push content from a content management system (CMS) to a network of players. Some do it a little better than others but the differentiation of identity is just not there. If there were a standard open software player that the industry rallied behind then everyone could focus […]

OLPC XO 1.75 Hardware, Firmware and Software

OLPC demo’ed their 3rd generation laptop – OLCP XO 1.75 – based on Marvell Armada 610 at CES 2011. The good thing about this platform is that they opened most of it including the hardware, the software and for the first time the firmware. However, I found out it’s not so easy to find the hardware / software development information and source on the OLPC site, so I’ve decided to make a summary and provide links to the hardware, firmware and software for OLPC XO 1.75. OLPC XO 1.75 Hardware The XO-1.75 is powered by Marvell Armada 610 CPU (88AP610) with an ARM core clocked at 1Ghz. It has 1GB DDR3 SDRAM, 4GiB NAND Flash, a TFT display, an SD Card slot, Wi-Fi,  a few USB ports and a camera. I believe the touchscreen is not part of the current hardware, but the block diagram below should be close to […]

GPL Source code and SDE for Archos Gen8 Devices

Right at the end of November, Archos released the first version of their Android 2.2 firmware (2.0.54). They now have also released the GPL code for this firmware. http://www.archos.com/support/download/software/sources/gen8-gpl-froyo.tgz In this package, you’ll find the following: Linux Kernel 2.6.29 buildroot – Set of tools to generate the cross-compilation toolchain, the kernel and the root file system A directory called “external”  with the following libraries, tools and drivers: alsa-lib – Audio library blktrace – Driver debugging tool elfcopy –  Tool to generate executable binaries grub – Bootloader iptables – Firewall Tool liblzo  – LZO Compression Library webkit – Web Browser Engine alsa-utils – Audio Tools BlueZ – Bluetooth Protocol Stack elfutils – Tool to manipulate executable binaries hostapd – For Wifi Authentication jdiff – Java Code Analyzer openvpn – VPN Client/Server wpa_supplicant – Wifi tools for WPA/WPA2 bison – Parser Generator dbus – Libray and daemon for IPC (InterProcess Communication) genext2fs […]

Linaro: Embedded Linux for ARM

Linaro is a Not For Profit (NFP) engineering organisation that works on Linux based open source software and tools. The organisation focuses on the ARM platform, mainly ARM v7A architecture, for example ARM Cortex-A8 or dual-core Cortex-A9 processors and is sponsored by ARM, Freescale, IBM, Samsung, ST-Ericsson, and Texas Instruments. The purpose of Linaro is to reduce the number of different Linux kernel for the ARM platform. They plan on releasing tools and Linux kernel every 6 months. And after about 6 months of existence, with around  80 engineering staff, they managed to release their first public version:  Linaro-10.11 on the 10th of November for TI OMAP4 Panda Board, IGEPv2, Freescale iMX51 and ST-E U8500 platforms. This release is based on Linux 2.6.35 kernel, GCC 4.4 toolchain and uBoot 2010.09. They released Linux 10.11 source code and tools, the hardware packs and the build instructions. Linaro also planned several technical […]

XIBO: An Open Source Digital Signage Server/Client

Today’s post will deal with Xibo (pronounced eX-E-bO), an open source, multi-display, multi-zone, fully scheduled digital signage solution. I’ll firstly give an overview and explain how to install the client and server in Windows XP. In another post, I’ll demo the system. The server can run on Windows or Linux and requires a web server (Apache / IIS), php5 and a MySQL database. The client can only runs on Windows 2000/Xp/Vista/7 and requires .NET Framework v3.5, Internet Explorer 7 or 8, Flash Player Version 9 or later, Windows Media Player 11 or later, Microsoft Powerpoint 2003 or later. As you can see from the client description, it won’t be able to run on Linux embedded systems, but it is still interesting to study this solution to see the content management flow, what this solution has to offer and how we get development idea from this solution.  An embedded client based […]

EmbeddedTS embedded systems design