Software Everywhere — David Beers on Mobile Computing

Several members of the OSGi Alliance--Nokia, IBM, Samsung, ProSyst, and Gatespace Telematics--have removed a barrier to the adoption of the OSGi component architecture standard by pledging to allow royalty-free implementations of the OSGi service platform. What this basically means is that any mobile platform vendor can implement the OSGi standard in their software and not have to worry about being sued for infringing patents these companies hold in this area. It's an extraordinary step that should accelerate Java ME's transformation into a much more powerful, flexible, and manageable mobile platform.

Peter Kriens blogs about the new patent pledge and makes a good case for using OSGi middleware with Java ME. You can learn a lot about OSGi from his blog, although some of his focus is in some of the more mature areas where it's been adopted, like telematics, and not so much in mobile phones, which is where the biggest opportunity lies.

I'm a firm believer that a standard component architecture is one of the things most needed for mobile computing to reach its full potential, and agree with Peter that OSGi looks like the best game in town now. Mobile applications need not just to be able to share libraries but to do so in a loosely coupled framework that enables remote addition or updating of modules without interupting service. This will enable much more sophisticated mobile applications to be assembled from plugins by different developers--the model that has made the Eclipse platform take off like a rocket. And that's exactly what OSGi makes possible.