Palm, PalmSource, and Palm OS Linux
In the space of a few hours on Friday afternoon, many web sites were proclaiming that Palm OS was dead and that Palm, Inc. was next. While it is true that we don’t have many solid details to go on, I seriously doubt that Palm or the Palm OS that we use every day is in any real danger. So let’s take a closer look at what we know, what we think we might know, and what we still need to get more details on.
What we know for sure
We know that in Palm’s 10-K filing that was posted on Friday, July 28, on their investor relations website. The Risk section of the document is what has gotten everyone all worked up. On page 21 (page 22 if you are reading the PDF file), there is a section of the document titled, “Our product strategy is substantially dependent on the Palm OS, which is owned by PalmSource, a former subsidiary of Palm that was acquired by Access Co., Ltd.”.
Reading page 21 reveals a few important details. Palm, Inc. will continue to license the Palm OS from ACCESS/PalmSource until December 2, 2009. If you have read some of the early news posts on this report, you may have incorrectly read that Palm’s license of Palm OS ends on December 2, 2006. This is simply not true. What really happens on December 2 of this year is that Palm makes a license payment to ACCESS. Per the terms of the license agreement that was reached last year, Palm is relieved “of [their] obligation to make minimum royalty payments under the license agreement after calendar year 2006.” Palm still gets to use Palm OS 5/Garnet until December 2009 and with the information we have on hand, gets to use Garnet essentially free for the years 2007 – 2009. Further, Palm is currently “in negotiations with PalmSource to expand our development and distribution rights to the current version of the Palm OS.” I want to be clear about this: Palm is still going to release new products, and some of those new products will continue to use Palm OS 5/Garnet. This is not only stated in the 10-K report, but also by Jim Christianson, Palm’s Director of Product Communications, in a statement he made to PalmAddict. Additionally, we know that Palm has recently appointed Bill Coleman to its board of directors. Mr. Coleman was the vice present of system software for Sun Microsystems. You can read the entire Palm press release here.
We also know that PalmSource will be running a special one day program during the 2006 LinuxWorld conference. This should provide an opportunity for developers to get a really good look at what the ACCESS Linux Platform (formerly Palm OS Linux) is all about and what it can do.
What we’re not sure of
At this point, we don’t know what Palm and ACCESS are specifically negotiating as part of their new licensing agreement. We don’t know if they are resetting target dates for unnamed milestones, the redistribution of responsibilities or the direction and focus of the new software. We also don’t know the status of the Blazer license agreement. According to a previously posted SEC filing (which is no longer available) on the Palm website, the Blazer license was set to expire by the end of February of 2006; yet the Treo 700p, released in May 2006, still has the Blazer web browser installed. At this point, it is not possible to know what the state of that license agreement is. Did Palm renew their agreement with ACCESS? Did the Treo 700p somehow get in “under the wire” as it were and Palm was able to release the Treo 700p with Blazer installed? Unless Palm or ACCESS tells us, we won’t know for sure what is going on with the bundled web browser.
Guessing games
Once again we are left wondering what is going on. The more answers we get only lead to more questions. Here is my take on what might be going on. (I have no inside information here. I’m just looking at the facts as we know them and then making some predictions.) It sounds like Palm is going to work with ACCESS to see if the co-development of the next generation operating system can be put back on track. Palm is a company that will hedge it bets. Why else would they have conservative hardware designs?
In the past, I’ve talked about Palm OS II, the other next generation operating system. And if you read David Beers’ blog, he asserts that Palm is still working on another version of a Palm OS that runs on a Linux kernel. I find myself agreeing with most of what David is saying in his blog. As a result, long time readers of the 1SRC editorial and the 1SRC podcast know that I feel strongly that Palm is working to build their own Linux-based operating system. Ultimately, we still don’t know for sure where Palm is planning on going. I suspect that we’ll know more about what is going on by the end of the year.
What are you feeling on this subject? Will Palm license ALP? Will they release what I’ve been calling the Palm OS II, their own version of a Linux-powered operating system? Or, will they do something else? Let me know in the discussion forums.
