The Consumer Electronics Linux Forum (CE Linux Forum or CELF) was a

non-profit organization A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...

to advance the

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

operating system as an

open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Op ...

platform for

consumer electronics Consumer electronics or home electronics are electronic (analog or digital) equipment intended for everyday use, typically in private homes. Consumer electronics include devices used for entertainment, communications and recreation. Usually r ...

(CE) devices. It had a primarily technical focus, working on specifications, implementations, conferences and testing to help Linux developers improve Linux for use in CE products. It existed from 2003 to 2010.

History

The forum was an outgrowth of a joint project between

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...

Corporation and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. (using the brand name

Panasonic formerly between 1935 and 2008 and the first incarnation of between 2008 and 2022, is a major Japanese multinational corporation, multinational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation, headquartered in Kadoma, Osaka, Kadoma, Osaka P ...

). CELF was founded in June 2003 by those plus six more consumer electronics companies, Hitachi Ltd., NEC Corporation, Royal Philips Electronics, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Sharp Corporation, and Toshiba Corporation. It was seen at least partially as a reaction to the use of

Windows CE Windows Embedded Compact, formerly Windows Embedded CE, Windows Powered and Windows CE, is an operating system subfamily developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows Embedded family of products. Unlike Windows Embedded Standard, which is base ...

for consumer electronics. Phillips and Samsung founded a group with similar aims in November 2004, promoting a universal home

application programming interface An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how t ...

called the UHAPI Forum. The UHAPI was presented to the CE Linux Forum in 2005.

NXP Semiconductors NXP Semiconductors N.V. (NXP) is a Dutch semiconductor designer and manufacturer with headquarters in Eindhoven, Netherlands. The company employs approximately 31,000 people in more than 30 countries. NXP reported revenue of $11.06 billion in 2 ...

spun off from Phillips in 2006, and the UHAP was revised up to a version 1.2. A sample implementation of UHAPI was published on

SourceForge SourceForge is a web service that offers software consumers a centralized online location to control and manage open-source software projects and research business software. It provides source code repository hosting, bug tracking, mirrorin ...

. The UHAPI forum added a few other supporters, such as the Digital TV Alliance of China and Japan-based Access (company), and maintained a web site until the

Great Recession The Great Recession was a period of marked general decline, i.e. a recession, observed in national economies globally that occurred from late 2007 into 2009. The scale and timing of the recession varied from country to country (see map). At ...

of 2008. By 2004, hardware from

Renesas Electronics is a Japanese semiconductor manufacturer headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, initially incorporated in 2002 as Renesas Technology, the consolidated entity of the semiconductor units of Hitachi and Mitsubishi Electric, Mitsubishi excluding their dynam ...

running software from

Lineo Lineo was a thin client and embedded systems company spun out of Caldera Thin Clients by 20 July 1999. History Caldera Thin Clients, Inc., had been created as a subsidiary of Caldera, Inc., on 2 September 1998. Caldera Thin Clients' original ...

was demonstrated at a CELF meeting. In 2005, a meeting in

San Jose, California San Jose, officially San José (; ; ), is a major city in the U.S. state of California that is the cultural, financial, and political center of Silicon Valley and largest city in Northern California by both population and area. With a 2020 popul ...

drew about engineers from competing companies. By the end of 2006, the competing

Linux Phone Standards Forum The Linux Phone Standards Forum (LiPS Forum) is a consortium of a group of companies to create standardization, standards for the use of Linux on mobile devices. The main goal of the LiPS Forum is to create application programming interfaces (APIs) ...

had formed, to focus on mobile devices. After other groups such as

Linaro Linaro is an engineering organization that works on free and open-source software such as the Linux kernel, the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), QEMU, power management, graphics and multimedia interfaces for the ARM family of instruction sets and im ...

and the

Limo Foundation The Tizen Association, formerly the LiMo Foundation (short for Linux Mobile), is a Non-profit organization, non-profit consortium which develops and maintains the Tizen mobile operating system. Tizen is a Linux-based operating system for smartphone ...

formed, some questioned the fragmentation of the industry. In 2010, the CE Linux Forum merged with the

Linux Foundation The Linux Foundation (LF) is a non-profit technology consortium founded in 2000 as a merger between Open Source Development Labs and the Free Standards Group to standardize Linux, support its growth, and promote its commercial adoption. Additi ...

, to become a technical work group of Linux Foundation. The group planned to support the

Yocto Project The Yocto Project is a Linux Foundation collaborative open source project whose goal is to produce tools and processes that enable the creation of Linux distributions for embedded and IoT software that are independent of the underlying architectu ...

to produce an embedded Linux distribution.

Activities

CELF initiatives included: * technical working groups, which produce specifications and implementations (usually patches against existing open source projects) to enhance Linux suitability for CE products * hosting of conferences dedicated to embedded Linux (see below) * providing hardware resources to open source developers * funding for direct feature development, via contracting with a few Linux developers * a test lab in

was established in 2006 Members submit technical output directly back to the relevant open source project (for example, by sending enhancements to the Linux kernel directly to the Linux kernel mailing list, or to an appropriate technology- or architecture-specific mailing list.) Collected information and forum output was primarily located on a

wiki A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pu ...

for embedded developers. The content of CELF's wiki was included on another site called eLinux.org, created by Tim Riker in 2006. As of 2007, CELF had the following technical working groups: # Audio, Video and Graphics # Bootup Time # Digital Television Profile # Memory Management # Mobile Phone Profile # Power Management # Real Time # Security # System Size The CE Linux Forum sponsors embedded projects. Amongst others the LinuxTiny patches and the LogFS and SquashFS flash file systems have been pushed to mainline Linux. The forum sponsored the

Embedded Linux Conference The Linux Foundation (LF) is a non-profit technology consortium founded in 2000 as a merger between Open Source Development Labs and the Free Standards Group to standardize Linux, support its growth, and promote its commercial adoption. Additi ...

since 2005. Originally started as a conference in the US, a yearly ELC Europe started in 2007. in 2007 it was hosted with the Real-time Linux Workshop in

Linz Linz ( , ; cs, Linec) is the capital of Upper Austria and third-largest city in Austria. In the north of the country, it is on the Danube south of the Czech border. In 2018, the population was 204,846. In 2009, it was a European Capital of ...

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

; in 2008 with the

NLUUG NLUUG (formerly known as The Netherlands Local Unix User Group) is an association of professional UNIX / Linux users in the Netherlands. The group aims to increase and extend the awareness and use of Open Standards (including UNIX) and similar op ...

Ede, Netherlands Ede () is a Municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality and a town in the centre of the Netherlands, in the province of Gelderland. Ede had 119,186 inhabitants. Population centres Community: * Bennekom * De Klomp * Deelen * Ede (town) * E ...

; and in 2009 with Embedded Systems Week in

Grenoble lat, Gratianopolis , commune status = Prefecture and commune , image = Panorama grenoble.png , image size = , caption = From upper left: Panorama of the city, Grenoble’s cable cars, place Saint- ...

. CELF sponsored the

Linux Symposium The Linux Symposium was a Linux and Open Source conference held annually in Canada from 1999 to 2014. The conference was initially named Ottawa Linux Symposium and was held only in Ottawa, but was renamed after being held in other cities in Canada. ...

from 2004 to 2008, hosting sessions specific to embedded use of Linux and development of Linux capabilities for embedded use. In Japan and Korea, CELF organizes Technical Jamborees every two months. Jamborees are smaller, have a single track, and are held in the local language. By 2009 CELF had about 30 members, consisting of consumer electronics manufacturers, semiconductor vendors, and Linux software companies: ARM Ltd., AXE, Inc., Broadcom, Canon Inc., ETRI, Fujitsu Limited, Fuji-Xerox, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, Ltd., IBM,

Intel Corporation Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 series ...

, Just Systems Corporation, LG Electronics, Lineo Solutions, Inc, Panasonic Corporation, MIPS Technologies, NEC Corporation, NXP Semiconductors, Renesas, Royal Philips Electronics, Samsung Electronics, Selenic Consulting, Sharp Corporation, SnapGear, Sony Corporation, Toshiba Corporation, Yamaha CorporationCE Linux membership list
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References

External links

* CEL
Website
{{Linux Linux organizations Embedded Linux Free and open-source software organizations

History

Activities

See also

References

External links