Hunting Penguins in the Desert: The CES Report

One year ago, Kunitake Ando, president and CEO of Sony, gave a keynote speech at CES explaining how his company would lead the rest of the industry’s
giants into an “always on” and “interactive” future built largely on a co-developed embedded Linux distribution. Six months later, in July, the CE
Linux Forum (CELF) was formed by Sony, Matshushita, NEC, Philips, Samsung, Sharp and Toshiba. Today, the membership roster also includes IBM,
Mitsubishi, Metrowerks, Motorola, Nokia, LSI Logic, HP, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Phoenix, Samsung, Sanyo and Montavista.

So, as CES approached, I looked for signs of World Domination at work. Sure enough, Montavista had lined up a hundred or more consumer electronics
partners, and the Embedded Linux Consortium had five programs in one session track. So I expected to see plenty of braggage about Linux out on the
show floor–at least among CELF members.

What I discovered was something else. The narrative that follows is an account of that discovery.