CE Linux Forum initiatives update

Hi all,

I wanted to give a brief update of some of the initiatives that CELF
is pursuing in the coming months.  The CELF Board of Directors
met last week in San Jose, and decided to continue funding (or begin
funding, in some cases) the following activities:

 * Embedded Linux Wiki
CELF will fund the creation of a vendor-neutral, community-oriented
wiki to host information related to the use of Linux in embedded
products.  Funding for an editor for the site has been approved,
and a task force is being created to help design and steer the site.

The wiki will be a new site especially dedicated to embedded Linux,
and much of the existing content of the current CELF public
wiki will be moved here.  The main goal of the site is
to create a community-oriented site, so CELF-specific material
will be de-emphasized or omitted.  Where appropriate, links
will be made to existing material (such as Wikipedia, Sourceforge
projects, etc.)

I will issue a separate call for volunteers for the task force,
but please consider helping us to create this site by
participating in the task force discussions, which will be held
on the celinux-dev mailing list.  (See
http://tree.celinuxforum.org/mailman/listinfo/celinux-dev
for subscription information.)

 * Contracted work on specific software development projects.
CELF will renew our contract with Matt Mackall, a respected
Linux kernel developer.  Matt has, in the last year, mainlined
a number of patches that CELF considers important for embedded
Linux, including patches having to do with system size, bootup
time, and debugging tools.  The Architecture Group of CELF
will consider a new list of projects for Matt and work with
him going forward to continue enhancing the Linux kernel
with features relevant to embedded projects.

Dennis Kropp was also contracted by the forum to develop
software related to the Audio,Video,Graphics specification (V 2.0).
This spec. was produced by CELF's AVG working group, and approved by the
forum this summer.  Dennis' work will be mainlined into related
projects and otherwise made available under an open source license,
sometime this fall.

Funding for additional contract work has also been approved,
primarily in the area of power management improvements for the Linux
kernel.

 * Hardware donations
CELF has a fund to be able to donate consumer electronics hardware
to interested and worthy community developers, who might otherwise
not be able to obtain such hardware.  Last year, CELF provided
cell phones and PDAs to developers, and we plan to make similar donations
this year.  If you know of an independent developer in need of
consumer electronics hardware, please let me know.

 * CELF Open Test Lab
The test lab has produced it's first test results, but work continues
on populating the lab with hardware, and with expanding the number of
tests available in the lab and test results produced by the lab.
The lab will move to expanded facilities in San Jose this fall, and work
continues on enhancing the lab software.

 * Conferences
CELF will again host an Embedded Linux Conference.  ELC 2007 will be
held on April 17-19 in San Jose, California in the US.  I will be issuing
a call for sessions soon.  In the meantime, please mark your calendars,
and start thinking about a technology or project you could present
as a session at the event.

CELF will participate in and sponsor Ottawa Linux Symposium 2007, next
July in Ottawa.  CELF has been a sponsor of OLS for the last few years,
and CELF and CELF members had major participation in this
year's OLS (2006).  We look forward to meeting with other members
of the community again next summer.

CELF hosts several regional conference throughout the year.
These conferences are open to the public, and have been quite successful
especially in Japan.  Please see the Events section (#7) on the front page
of our wiki:
http://tree.celinuxforum.org/CelfPubWiki/FrontPage

 * CELF working groups
Of course, CELF technical workgroups continue working in their
respective technical areas to define standards, expose CELF member
projects, encourage open source participation, and otherwise
make and encourage enhancements to Linux for use in Consumer
Electronics products.  Results of this work are mainlined where
possible, and are demo'ed and published at CELF conferences and OLS,
and described on our forum web site.

Regards,
 -- Tim

=============================
Tim Bird
Architecture Group Chair, CE Linux Forum
Senior Staff Engineer, Sony Electronics
=============================