Palm licenses Palm OS Garnet source code from ACCESS

For better or for worse, we're about full-circle with Garnet now: Palm just forked over $44 million to ACCESS for a perpetual, non-exclusive license to the Garnet source code, granting Palm "the right to use Palm OS Garnet in whole or in part in any product from Palm and together with any other system technologies," along with the welcome ability to modify underlying Garnet source code. The good news is that in the short term we should be seeing some stability and feature enhancements on the Treo and other Palm handhelds, the bad news is that this appears to be a further procrastination for the introduction of ALP to Palm devices, possibly even spelling a cancellation of that roadmap altogether. What we do know is that ACCESS and Palm have set up a "test/compatibility harness" to ensure "forward-compatibility" of Garnet apps on ALP's Garnet Host layer. For the time being we'll just be glad to see Palm shore up its ever-buggier OS, but one of these days we're going to want a modern OS from these guys to fiddle around with.

[Via Palm Info Center]

[... @ Dec 7th 2006 10:56AM]

So does this mean that we might actually see linux based palms being released? Maybe I won't have to live with familiar linux + opie to get a decent mobile computer...

But I still don't get why Pauls continues to bash anyone for anything that they do... By the way he wrote this posts you would think that a linux based os is a bad thing.

[Iceman @ Dec 7th 2006 11:45AM]

You misunderstood the article. Palm licensed the source code for Garnet, which is the existing Palm OS. They want to keep hacking what they have, while they are waiting for linux.

[M. Rod Von Hugenstein @ Dec 7th 2006 11:42AM]

So Palm sold the rights to the Palm OS to Access, and now they are paying Access for the right to use it?

Hmm, I guess that makes sense to somebody at Palm.

[Henry Yeh @ Dec 7th 2006 3:22PM]

Palm did not sell the OS to Access. Palm, Inc. did not own the OS. PalmSource owned the OS, which is the company that Access later bought. In case you don't remember, the original Palm, Inc., split into two companies, palmOne (which made hardware) and PalmSource (which made software). Later on, palmOne bought the rights to the Palm name from PalmSource, and changed their name accordingly. After that, Access bought PalmSource outright.

[peej @ Dec 7th 2006 11:41AM]

No, this means that palm is going to keep pushing out products with that POS buggy as hell OS called garnet.

HEY PALM, a $600 phone should not reset every other day or more often. Oh, and thanks for doing the quality R&D on the 700p that included several steps backward. You are becoming an INCOMPETENT company.

Hi HTC how are you today...

[Pete_L_P @ Dec 7th 2006 5:58PM]

Your comment about "palm's buggy OS" is way, way off.

I'm no palm fanboy, since I've been using a Samsung i730 with windows mobile for over a year, and am sufficiently satisfied to stay put until EV-DO Rev A comes along. Given the likely release dates for Rev A devices, I'll probably get a windows mobile Rev A device as well. I've had a Treo 650 before that, and still support them now.

In my personal experience, the Treos were MUCH, MUCH more stable than my i730 with Win Mobile 3, and poles on pdaPhoneHome says the i730 is even LESS stable (much, much less stable) with win mobile 5.

Pete

[Jeff @ Dec 7th 2006 11:45AM]

So we're getting another OS with licensed shit in it, meaning limited access by developers to the underlying portions, meaning continued crappy application support and crappy multitasking/memory management.

Also, I want to see more downloadable OS updates. It's ridiculous that they expect you to buy a new Treo every time they come out with an OS upgrade. That's like buying a new computer every time a Windows service pack comes out.

[David @ Dec 7th 2006 2:49PM]

Garnet? Sweet! It's yesterday's technology... today!

I hope I don't ever hear Palm complain about Microsoft taking over the mobile phone and PDA market. Palm has pretty much handed it to them on a silver platter. :(

I'd like to someday be able to replace my Treo 650 with a phone running ALP, but I'm not sure if that day will come, considering Palm's obsession with 1990's technology.