The news that PalmSource bought China MobileSoft for its knowledge of the exploding Chinese market for mobile devices makes a lot of sense. If you want more on the business side, Forbes has a good story on their site.The news that PalmSource wants to use the CMS implementation of mobile Linux in a future Palm OS also makes a lot of sense or so it appears. After all, China and other newly emerging markets are looking at the freedom that an open source code base gives them, not to mention the lower cost. But here’s what doesn’t make sense. PalmSource’s belief, as told to me by Michael Mace, chief competitive officer at the company, that there will be no compatibility issues around applications developed for Cobalt, the current OS, and the future Linux OS. Mace believes that a set of APIs called Protein will bridge the difference. Write to these APIs and it will run on either system. A set of APIs will not solve all of the issues. Especially when you have independent developers worldwide doing their own thing so to speak.Perhaps Mace is playing it a bit coy. PalmSource knows that Linux will be a great competitive advantage as they expand into these new markets and maybe they figure they’ll worry about compatibilty issues down the road. I foresee the day that PalmSource or the licensees are going to have a lot of headaches, maybe even regrets, as users complain vociferously about applications they bought that don’t run on one or of the other OSes. Time will tell. Technology Industry