Samsung Sponsors Enlightenment, EFL Development

Only last week Samsung pushed out a press release announcing its new mobile operating system, named Bada. Little is known about this new operating system beyond the name of the project, but thanks to Phoronix, we know a little detail that might indicate what, exactly, Bada will be like. As it turns out, Samsung is sponsoring the Enlightenment project.

Enlightenment project lead Carsten “Rasterman” Haitzler announced on the project’s website this morning that they were working with a top-5 electronics producer – in fact, not just working, but that that company also sponsored development on Enlightenment and the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (EFL). What does this mean for users and developers?

“It means that you are likely to see top-quality electronic devices running the same things you use on your desktop,” Rasterman writes, “This means as a developer the same libraries and API’s will be there, ready to use, out of the box. You can even start your development now in anticipation. Use Elementary, Evas, Edje, Ecore, Eet, Eina, and so on and design for a small screen with a ‘finger’ and minimal keyboard.”

There was no mention of the name of the company, but Phoronix has uncovered that this company is in fact Samsung Electronics. First public confirmation can be found in the commit log, where a edje file editor popped up, authored by Samsung, released under the GPLv3. Phoronix also received confirmation from Samsung itself.

It is very difficult to tell just how far along Samsung’s involvement with Enlightenment is, and as such, if we will really see Enlightenment and EFL on Bada. Still, does it make sense to make lots of noise with a new mobile operating system, and then use the EFL for something else entirely?

Rasterman has put out three videos showing off some of the fruits of the collaboration, and it’s clear the work is geared towards the mobile touch side of thing (notice the sliders).

There’s some pretty fancy stuff in there, and the EFL should certainly be a good fit for mobile devices with relatively limited performance capabilities. Even though I, as a non-programmer, can’t tell for sure, I have always had this idea that the EFL are very well-coded and efficient – maybe someone with experience can confirm (or deny) that?

10 Comments

  1. 2009-11-18 6:05 pm
    • 2009-11-18 6:53 pm
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