Yet another open mobile body launches

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 27 May 2009 08:41

IT Industry - Strategy

We've had LiMo to promote open source Linux mobile platforms; we've had the Open Mobile Alliance to promote the Android open mobile platform and we've had Symbian being made into an open mobile platform. Now, welcome the Open Mobile Consortium, but its goals are rather different.

The Open Mobile Consortium (http://www.open-mobile.org ) is an organisation whose goals are primarily humanitarian. It aims to develop and promote open source mobile software tools that will "help organisations to better serve the health, humanitarian ad development needs of the 'bottom billion' the poorest and most disenfranchised citizens of the world."

It is billed as "an unprecedented collaboration across organisations" that "together are building a vibrant set of platforms for use, at no cost, with no restrictions." OMC says its members "share a vision that by working together to drive grassroots mobile technology innovation in some of the most challenging, resource-poor environments in the world, they will create a simple, flexible, and reliable set of technology that enable to individual and organisations anywhere in the world to effect social change."

Robert Kirkpatrick, CTO of InSTEDD and chair of OMC, explains, "OMC's approach is a radical departure from how the traditional humanitarian and development works. Typically, organisations must compete for funding grants, which frequently leads to 'silo' mentality and hesitation to fully share key technologies. By contrast, we are agreeing to work together to share source code, standards, protocols, approaches and lessons learned. We're even sharing development plans and testing each others' software. As a result, we're building a vibrant community and making very rapid progress."

Katrin Verclas, founder of MobileActive.org and a founding member of OMC adds, "The mobile technology explosion has put more than four billion phones in use around the world. In the hands of organisations working for social good, and with easily available and accessible software, mobile phones can significantly improve the health and well-being of people in developing countries around the world. But there are technology and collaboration barriers. The Open Mobile Consortium aims to eliminate these barriers by developing interoperable, free and open source mobile platforms, and we encourage others to join us."

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