It is a well known fact that the history of MeeGo is not one that is straightforward to comprehend. It gets even more confusing in the automotive space with GENIVI choosing MeeGo for In-Vehicle-Infotainment (IVI).
Anyway, here is a brief timeline of what has happened so far:
1) Intel and Nokia get together to create MeeGo (Link)
2) MeeGo promoted as ‘the OS’ for a range of devices from smartphones to car infotainment systems (but not many devices launched in the CE world)
3) The GENIVI Alliance chooses MeeGo for IVI (Link)
4) Nokia dumps MeeGo and jumps to Windows OS (Link)
5) Intel steps up to the mark and says it is fully committed to MeeGo (Link)
6) GENIVI makes MeeGo ‘officially compliant’ for IVI (Link)
HOWEVER, that is not the end to the story - it continues, now with a twist - enter Samsung and HTML 5.
Intel is now working with Samsung (and possibly other players) to create a new Linux OS called TIZEN. In the official MeeGo blog, Intel has said that HTML 5 is becoming increasingly important and that MeeGo is not good enough as it is to have a strong HTML 5 integration. So, it is creating a new OS, TIZEN, with good HTML 5 capabilities.
Intel basically sees TIZEN as the next step of MeeGo. Imad Sousou, Director, Intel Open Source Technology Center has said “Over the next couple of months, we will be working very hard to make sure that users of MeeGo can easily transition to Tizen, and I will be working even harder to make sure that developers of MeeGo can also transition to Tizen. I want to personally thank everyone who has participated in MeeGo over the past year and a half, and I encourage you to join us at Tizen.org.”
So what does this mean for the auto industry? Will OEMs already working with MeeGo continue to do so and launch something that is already obsolete? Will GENIVI make TIZEN or perhaps another OS compliant for IVI use? Or will OEMs get fed up of GENIVI and simply do their own separate things?
Guess only time will tell…
[This is an original Telematics News article and readers are welcome to leave their comments below]
UPDATE: Thank you to one of our readers for pointing out that the above article seems to create a strong link between GENIVI and MeeGo. It should be pointed out that other IVI distributions from vendors such as MontaVista, Mentor, Canonical are also GENIVI compliant.
Related article (external): @Arstechnica
Genivi selected MeeGo IVI as the default open source distribution aligned with Genivi specifications.
Those specifications identify software components coming from open source projects, genivi projects and commercial software.
As for now Genivi is only publishing specifications and there are many commercial distribution compliant with Genivi, like Wind River PFI.
MeeGo is only one of them, freely available, and I guess Tizen could be an update.
As for now Genivi does not specify HMI or input framework, MeeGo is higly relaying on Qt, but a Genivi compliant solution can also relay on Flash, EFL, HTML5 , etc…
The only complain is in fact related to app SDK that could have been based on Qt (QT4.7 framework cover many areas, probably more than HTML5 as for now), but in fact it is not part of the specifications.
Apps using a UI will relay on dedicated Genivi flavor used by car manufacturers / Device manufacturers. Non UI apps are developed with D-BUS interfaces, so independant from HMI framework.
Advantage of Tyzen framework is linked to app SDk (HTML5 and WAC2.0)and app market infrastructure integration (Intel App UP). So it is maybe just in time to be proposed as SDK and market specification example for 2012 timeframe in Genivi…
To my opinion, from a Genivi point of view I think this announcement has no big impact.
In fact it impact developments made with QT, since the future of Qt is not anymore linked to tyzen.
There will be no MeeGo 1.3, MeeGO 1.2 will get end of life in the near future I guess.
Having a look to limo architecture, HMI framework is based on GTK and Enlightment on top of X11. Running QT should not be an issue even if it is not aligned with the roadmap.
My concern is about the SDK, it will become a nightmare for people trying to develop on top of those solutions… at the end it will be probably a good solution but for the next months, OMG, we have to wait and see, this is risky now to start development on one technology.
Let see what genivi will say … maybe at some point they will agree to implement Android SDK on top of Genivi, just like QNX is plaing to do, but for that they will have to convince Google to get some comitment about long term support, good luck !