Motorola joins Eclipse, proposes mobile Linux project

Motorola announced this week it was investing in Eclipse by joining as a Strategic Developer Member. As part of this commitment, Motorola will hold a seat on the Board of Directors, participate in various councils of the Eclipse Foundation, and dedicate a number of developers to working on Eclipse projects.

On the heels of this announcement, Motorola proposed a new project called Tools for Mobile Linux, which they will lead. The project will provide frameworks and tools for developing C++ applications that run on mobile devices. TmL will be part of the larger Device Software Development Platform (DSDP) project, which includes Nokia's Mobile Tools for Java platform, and Fujitsu's Native Application Builder (NAB).

It's unclear where the code for TmL will come from. Some projects start from scratch (like BIRT), and some start with a donation of an existing product or code base (like WTP). The TmL project proposal simply says:

We will conduct a review of all potential contributions, as several organizations have developed capabilities similar to what Eclipse TmL proposes. Those contributions which best align with the goals of the project will be refactored and used as the starting point for TmL.

Some thought has apparently been put into making sure TmL will work well with other related projects such as CDT, Test and Performance, and other DSDP projects. If approved, TmL will be the second proposed Eclipse project specifically targeted at Linux. The first one is the Linux Distro project.