“Industry leaders today announced the formation of the
TV Linux Alliance, which will define a standards-based Linux
environment for the digital set-top box market. Twenty-four leading
technology suppliers to cable, satellite, and telecommunications
operators have allied to produce Linux standards designed to
improve time-to-market and product robustness in the advanced
set-top box market.The alliance will define a standard application programming
interface (API) that will simplify the implementation of TV
middleware and device drivers for the Linux operating environment,
allowing network operators to select from a variety of vendors
whose offerings are interoperable with the common API. The alliance
plans to capitalize on Linux designs already underway among various
founders and harmonize early work across the industry to ensure
that Linux is delivered to the digital set-top under a common
framework of evolving standards-based specifications. Linux is a
proven, stable, and robust open source operating system with a
strong developer community, making it an intelligent choice for
network operators, infrastructure providers, and hardware
manufacturers.”