Conclusions
The Moblin project offers community and a software development platform to enable developers to build better mobile applications. An open source platform and community of developers is the most effective solution, and necessary to open the arena that is largely governed by hardware manufacturers and non-open mobile application platforms. Mobile Internet devices, netbooks, and other mobile computing devices are in their infancy, and a new era of mobile computing devices is beginning to emerge. Moblin offers the tools, community, and standards for seeding the growth of higher-quality, feature-rich applications.
The open source development community and Intel's open source branch are contributing heavily to the Moblin project to encourage this type of development. Intel has recently acquired OpenedHand to accelerate and infuse the Moblin project with an innovative group of mobile developers and mobile open source projects. OpenedHand is a company based in the United Kingdom, specializing in building software for development of various mobile applications such as Matchbox, Poky, and Clutter. With the backing of a software giant such as Intel and the Moblin project, and using Linux as a mobile operating system, mobile applications will no longer be locked into a single platform, and can offer better quality, usability, and features.
Matthew Sacks is a systems administrator and writer from Los Angeles, CA. Visit his blog or email him at matthew@matthewsacks.com.