The Linux Foundation has announced five new members today including embedded processor maker Freescale. Freescale say that the Linux Foundation hosts important embedded work such as the Yocto Project and collaboration with OpenEmbedded, so its membership and an increase in contributions to the ecosystem is a natural move. Consultancy Amarula Solutions has also joined, bringing its "extensive experience in mainlining patches, drivers and machine-layer code in the Linux kernel" to the group, and is looking to collaborate more widely.

SIM Technology, a Hong Kong listed developer of handsets and wireless communications devices, also joined the Foundation with the company CEO noting that "Linux is the undisputed leader in operating systems for embedded devices". From the world of webhosting and software-as-a-service provisioning, Superb Internet Corporation has also joined the Foundation. Finally, systems integrator and services company Symphony Teleca Corporation has joined the Foundation as it is using Linux as a foundational element of more and more solutions that it supplies.

The Linux Foundation says that embedded development and cloud computing are the two fields where it expects an accelerated pace of development in 2013. Given the market is rapidly turning to handheld devices and internet-based distributed services, this is not a surprising prediction. It will, though, be interesting to see how the Foundation brings together both the embedded device makers and the data centre specialists, given their very different requirements.

(djwm)