music and entertainment news: Linux Foundation forms Automotive Grade Workgroup, aims to open-source your ride with Tizen

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Linux Foundation forms Automotive Grade Workgroup, aims to open-source your ride with Tizen

It doesn't take much driving to notice that many in-car infotainment systems are custom-built and locked down tight. The Linux Foundation sees it differently and wants our cars to embrace the same notions of common roots and open code that we'd find in an Ubuntu box. Its newly-formed Automotive Grade Linux Workgroup is transforming Tizen into a reference platform that car designers can use for the center stack, or even the instrument cluster. The promise is to both optimize a Linux variant for cars and provide the same kind of years-long support that we'd expect for the drivetrain. Technology heavy-hitters like Intel, Harman, NVIDIA, Samsung and TI form the core of the group, although there are already automakers who've signaled their intentions: Jaguar Land Rover, Nissan and Toyota are all part of the initial membership. We don't know how soon we'll be booting into Tizen on the morning commute, but we'd expect in-car systems to take a step forward -- just as long as we don't have to recompile our car's OS kernel.