Is open source coming to a mobile near you?

The Open Source Development Labs (OSDL), an industry consortium devoted to improving Linux, plans to launch an initiative today to bring the open source operating system to mobile phones.

OSDL's Mobile Linux Initiative is intended to improve Linux for the small but increasingly powerful devices. It's also set up to spur development of applications, to outline requirements for different mobile phone uses and to host related open source development projects.

OSDL hopes the work will reproduce the success of an earlier effort pooling work by Linux software and hardware allies, the Carrier Grade project to tailor Linux to telecommunications gear.

OSDL chief executive Stuart Cohen said: "There was a tremendous price-performance gain when people transitioned to Linux for the telecom equipment manufacturers. Now people are looking for that in the mobile area."

Mobile phones are a growing market - research firm Ovum expects 2.8 billion of them will be sold in 2009 - so it's no surprise that many companies are angling for the business. Linux allies are up against Microsoft and Symbian for high-end phones and several other, often custom-written, operating systems for the mass market.

Among the 20 OSDL member companies involved are chipmaker Intel and embedded operating system companies MontaVista Software, PalmSource and Wind River Systems. The group's in-person meeting will be in Beijing, in the country where much mobile phone research and development takes place, Cohen said.

MontaVista, a specialist in Linux for gadgets and networking gear, already has a version of the operating system for mobile phones - indeed, it's used in several handsets from Motorola. PalmSource and Wind River are relatively recent Linux converts.

Intel has pushed Linux for years, funding development and working on several projects itself, and the operating system is most widely used on computers based on its chips. But while Intel is dominant in desktops and servers, it has made less headway in processors for mobile phones, where its competitors include ARM Holdings and Texas Instruments.

Today, Linux is suitable chiefly for higher-end phones with powerful processors and larger amounts of memory. Part of the OSDL group's technical work will be to spread the software to more widely used but less powerful devices, said Bill Weinberg, OSDL's open source architecture specialist.

Weinberg said: "There are a set of economic and technical barriers that have prevented Linux from enjoying more market share across the total phone space." Economic barriers have included supporting the low-cost, integrated components used on lower-end phones, he said.

One technical goal of the Mobile Linux Initiative will be to bring software enhancements to the "mainline" kernel, the heart of the operating system. The kernel is maintained by Linux leader Linus Torvalds and his allies, who have preferred to work on mainstream enhancements rather than on features geared specifically to "embedded" computing devices such as mobile phones, robot controllers and automated teller machines.

Cohen said: "The handset manufacturers' deeply embedded requirements are... not making their way back into the kernel."

But Weinberg believes the Mobile Linux Initiative can find a way to bring some features into the kernel - for example, by setting up an overarching mechanism to deal with power management.

Slowing processors down during idle moments is critical to preserve batteries in mobile phones but that power-management approach is now also used to preserve mobile computer battery power and to cut electricity consumption and waste heat in servers. But what makes power management hard to handle is that processor makers are all using different interfaces, Weinberg said.

He said: "That kind of hardware divergence needs to be captured in a single umbrella technology more aligned with the mainstream kernel."

Another challenge the group will tackle will be to handle mobile phone "baseband" processors, the part of the chip that deals with radio communication tasks. Today, a "real-time" operating system with a very fast response time to high-priority interruptions is most often used in the baseband component but OSDL wants Linux to arrive there, too. Right now, Weinberg said, Linux can keep up with the 800-microsecond response time necessary - but not on a chip that slows down to conserve power or that juggles many different tasks.

Being able to support baseband processors' software will help Linux spread into mainstream phones, Weinberg said.

Stephen Shankland writes for CNET News.com