Software Leaders to Advise Linaro; Canonical, GENIVI, HP, LiMo and MontaVista become Advisors to Linaro

December 14, 2010 -- Following completion of its first major release in November, Linaro announces the expansion of its ecosystem to include Advisory Partners Canonical, GENIVI, HP, LiMo Foundation and MontaVista Software all of whom are involved in building complex Linux based software. The Advisors will help to guide the Linaro Technical Steering Committee (TSC) on critical industry needs, facilitating the alignment of requirements.

Linaro exists to accelerate innovation among software developers working on the most advanced semiconductor System-on-Chip (SoC) designs. The current wave of "alwaysconnected, always‐on" devices is increasingly turning to Linux and highly integrated SoCs to achieve the performance and battery life consumers demand.

The availability of a stable, optimized software base and tools make it easier and quicker to develop high performance consumer devices. Manufacturers will benefit from an improved product development cycle, spending less time on low level, nondifferentiating software and more time on product innovation and delivering exceptional user experiences.

"Having HP, Canonical, GENIVI, LiMo Foundation and MontaVista Software as advisors to our Technical Steering Committee will help us to make the best decisions on resource deployment, for the benefit of both our members and the open source community." said George Grey, CEO, Linaro. "We will continue to build extensive relationships with the electronics industry and open source communities to ensure our engineering is responsive to industry needs and is widely deployed."

"We believe that Linaro is a critical strategic partner for accelerating the ARM software and silicon ecosystem," said Steve Manser, senior vice president, Product Development, Palm Global Business Unit, Personal Systems Group, HP. "Through collaboration and convergence on common Linux foundational components and tools, HP looks to accelerate our innovative webOS platform with the latest ARM-based SoC designs. webOS will play a prominent role in HP's future, and we see Linaro and the ARM ecosystem as key allies for building that future."

"Shortening development time, getting products to market quickly and reducing development costs for embedded Linux based products are key goals for both Linaro and GENIVI," said Graham Smethurst, President of GENIVI. "As an advisor to Linaro we can provide aligned automotive industry input for IVI solutions, helping Linaro shape the engineering efforts applied to its optimized foundation of open source tools and software."

"LiMo's vision is to deliver a vibrant ecosystem of commercial products and servicesthat are enabled through an independent and competitive Linux based mobile software platform developed in close collaboration with key stakeholders in the mobile industry," said Morgan Gillis, Executive Director of LiMo Foundation. "We are delighted to join Linaro's TSC as an Advisor Partner and look forward to collaborating with Linaro in shaping up the next generation Linux ecosystem that will deliver a rich and connected user experience to consumers across a diverse range of devices."

"As a long time supporter of embedded Linux for ARM processors, MontaVista is delighted to be collaborating with other industry leaders as a Linaro Advisor", said Dan Cauchy, vice president of marketing and business development, MontaVista Software. "Our goal is to help drive rapid innovation of Linux components and tools within Linaro, commercialize the results, and make them available as part of MontaVista Linux for the benefit of our customers, device manufacturers and the ARM ecosystem."

"As an Advisor Partner we look forward to shaping the next generation of Ubuntu devices with the Linaro ecosystem. Canonical's customers will be able to engage with us to focus on the user experience in the knowledge that the solution is based on shared and standard components" says Jane Silber, CEO at Canonical, "We look forward to working with Linaro to rapidly accelerate the time-to-market for devices, ensuring that users and partners can quickly take advantage of hardware improvements."

For more information on the company, access to software and tools, and information on the community and open engineering, visit www.linaro.org