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One ironic, and quite amusing misuse of the word open is in the context of handset operating systems. The likes of Windows Mobile, Symbian and Palm are frequently referred to as open OSes when they're not open at all. In fact, they're quite tightly closed. If you don't believe me, ask Microsoft or Symbian for their platform source code and count the seconds it takes for the laughter to begin.

Linux, on the other hand, is open source and a huge amount of interest and investment has now been poured into mobile Linux. The LiPS Forum, the LiMo Foundation, Purple Labs, a la Mobile, ACCESS, Celunite, MIZI Research, Open-Plug and TrollTech are just a few of the outfits providing mobile Linux specifications, base systems or complete Linux software stacks. The solutions coming out of these companies share two things in common: Firstly, from the perspectives of hardware integration and application execution, they are largely incompatible with each other; and secondly, the handset market share they currently enjoy is tiny - most have no market share at all. These two factors are related.

True open source is great since innovations are continually fed back into the community which can tremendously turbo-charge the evolution of a platform. However, while Innovation is always welcome at the open source party, he usually travels with his best friend, Incompatibility, and Incompatibility is never without his buddy, Fragmentation. And as anyone who's tried organising a party knows, once fragmentation arrives, the party's over! This is the problem which mobile Linux is currently facing.

To stop fragmentation, a successful open source party needs an oversized bouncer at the door to block incompatibility. Having digested all the information released about the Linux-based Android, it is clear that Google intends to be such a bouncer for its nascent platform. This has led to many open source evangelists crying foul, arguing that, while Google is showing off its open source credentials, Android is being kept closed by stealth.

To a certain extent these pundits are correct, but the industry needs to wake up to the fact that true open source Linux is not the panacea it was once thought. The mobile market has finally reached a level of maturity where applications and services are now driving the next stage of growth. Operators are demanding that their handset portfolios consolidate around two or three platforms so that rich applications can be proliferated as widely across their subscriber base as possible, and the operators' OEM suppliers are having to respond. We are aware of some service providers seeing as much as 50% of their data traffic channelled to the MySpace site alone, and as such services evolve off the browser into widgets and dedicated apps, operators cannot afford to maintain a catalogue of application variants to match a disparate handset portfolio.

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