Motorola speeds open source momentum with Apache

The biggest obstacle in Java’s path to becoming the dominant software architecture for mobile phones has been its fragmentation – both in terms of technical features and the various licensing schemes adopted by its early exponents. The past two years have seen the handset makers and large operators increasingly taking the steering wheel of the mobile Java movement, seeking to create unified platforms and work around the confusion caused by Sun’s halfhearted open source approach. Motorola has been the most aggressive in recent months, and making itself the leading light in an industry-wide mobile Java framework would certainly score it major competitive points against arch-rival Nokia, which is equally committed to Java, but has tended to plough its own furrow. Motorola’s latest move is to adopt the Apache Software Foundation’s open source licensing process in the hope of making this the standard for Java ME, the mobile version of the architecture.