Just a sec while I grep that phone call

Surprisingly "MOTO"-rola had a very big booth at LinuxWorld last week. All of their messaging was around the MOTO cell phone business, which was a bit perplexing (they've only toyed with a few Linux based phones in other markets) until I learned Motorola announced their MOTOMAGX program, Linux running as their midrange cell phone OS platform.

Motomagx is more than just Motorola announcing they will use Linux OS for their phones. They now have a platform lineup, from basic to full featured PDA-phones, of which Motomagx fills out the middle of the platform line. Motorola is clearly looking to Linux as a way to attract more developers and software to the phone platforms. They held sessions for developers and have a start on web sites to help support them.

I'm not a phone OS application developer so I couldn't tell you all the secrets to attracting developers to write software for your phone platform, but finally adopting Linux is a great step in the right direction. Motorola is also getting involved in various Linux initiatives like LiMo, Gnome Mobile Initiative, CE Linux Forum and the LinuxFoundation. Joel West has a very nice (and more complete) write up on the Motomagx announcement on his site if you are interested in additional perspective about this.

Does this mean Linux could be coming to Motorola Q near you? As a Q user who reboots my Windows Mobile device a couple of times a week (for no good reason other than Windows Mobile likes to lock up for no detectable reason, other than its running Windows) I'd love to have Linux running on my Q. We'll have to wait and see if that's in cards or not.

Bottom line, open source software such as Linux is spreading into more and more devices, consumer phones in this case. Let's welcome Motorola to the Linux community and hope they are a good steward of open source and efforts to further its use across their and other industries.