CE Linux Forum

The Consumer Electronics Linux Forum (CE Linux Forum or CELF) was a non-profit organization to advance the Linux operating system as an open-source software platform for consumer electronics (CE) devices. It had a primarily technical focus, working on specifications, implementations, conferences and testing to help Linux developers improve Linux for use in CE products. It existed from 2003 to 2010. The forum was an outgrowth of a joint project between Sony Corporation and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. (using the brand name Panasonic). CELF was founded in June 2003 by those plus six more consumer electronics companies, Hitachi Ltd., NEC Corporation, Royal Philips Electronics, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Sharp Corporation, and Toshiba Corporation. It was seen at least partially as a reaction to the use of Windows CE for consumer electronics. Phillips and Samsung founded a group with similar aims in November 2004, promoting a universal home application programming interface called the UHAPI Forum. The UHAPI was presented to the CE Linux Forum in 2005. NXP Semiconductors spun off from Phillips in 2006, and the UHAP was revised up to a version 1.2. A sample implementation of UHAPI was published on SourceForge. The UHAPI forum added a few other supporters, such as the Digital TV Alliance of China and Japan-based Access (company), and maintained a web site until the Great Recession of 2008. By 2004, hardware from Renesas Electronics running software from Lineo was demonstrated at a CELF meeting. In 2005, a meeting in San Jose, California drew about engineers from competing companies. By the end of 2006, the competing Linux Phone Standards Forum had formed, to focus on mobile devices. After other groups such as Linaro and the Limo Foundation formed, some questioned the fragmentation of the industry. In 2010, the CE Linux Forum merged with the Linux Foundation, to become a technical work group of Linux Foundation. The group planned to support the Yocto Project to produce an embedded Linux distribution.