The company will contribute software, engineering resources and expertise to help produce a development environment for mobile Linux platforms Motorola will announce on Thursday that it has joined the Eclipse Foundation as a Strategic Developer member and is proposing a project to boost mobile Linux application development.With Strategic Developer status, Motorola has a seat on the open source tools organization’s board of directors and participates in the Eclipse Architecture, Requirements and Planning councils, the company said. The company had participated in Eclipse projects before but had not signed up as a Strategic Developer-level member.Motorola is working with Eclipse to propose an Eclipse Tools for mobile Linux (TmL) project, which would be part of the Device Software Development Platform (DSDP) Top-Level Project at Eclipse. The TmL effort is intended eventually to provide a home for mobile Linux extensions. “Our project will be focused specifically on building a framework that will enable developers to write mobile Linux applications,” said Christy Wyatt, vice president of ecosystem and market development at Motorola. Applications could range from gaming to enterprise and productivity applications to multimedia and messaging, she said.The company will contribute software, engineering resources and expertise to help produce a development environment for mobile Linux platforms. Efforts are focused on enabling all phases of the application lifecycle for developers building C and C++ applications for mobile Linux platforms.“Mobile Linux is an extremely compelling initiative, and Eclipse is pleased to be working towards offering developers extended options to develop in this environment,” Eclipse Executive Director Mike Milinkovich said in a statement released by Motorola. Motorola’s Eclipse membership is regarded by the company as another step in promoting awareness and adoption of Linux in the mobile space. In conjunction with other vendors, Motorola last week announced intent to build a Linux-based platform for mobile devices and create a foundation to support it. The company also recently launched Motodev, which is a developer and ISV program, and opensource.motorola.com, for sharing of source code, open source projects, ideas and information. Software DevelopmentDevelopment Tools