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Volantis Opens Up its Mobility Server, Calls for Developers

There have been several recent examples of convergence between the telecom industry and the open source world, as we documented in a recent post. Today, Volantis Systems, which provides mobile content delivery software, is out with an interesting development: an open source version of its Mobility Server application, released under the GNU Public License, version three. The code being opened was under development for seven years according to company officials, and is available now. It reaches out to thousands of mobile device types.

Volantis had already made its Mobility Server available as a free download in late 2007. By open sourcing it, the company is looking to the broad development community to help deliver web sites and applications aimed at mobile users for delivery on an ever-increasing range of mobile devices.

Currently, Mobility Server is tuned to deliver content to more than 5,000 types of mobile devices, when it has historically been difficult for developers of open source mobile technologies to reach so many hardware types. "Developing for this market is difficult thanks to the splintered phone market, which will only continue to diversify," said Volantis CEO Mark Watson, in announcing the open source move.

To encourage developers to get involved with Mobility Server, Volantis has launched a new portion of its web site to provide information, and allow contributor input. The company hopes that its mature device library will attract developers.

While there is no question that mobile content delivery is on the rise, it's also tough to identify which types of mobile content business users and consumers want, and how they want it delivered. For example, on the consumer side, numerous attempts to deliver mobile TV services have faltered. On the business side, useful content and services tend to trickle into use, but complaints stack up about what work people can get done on which size displays, etc. Nevertheless, the more open source applications and operating systems we see on mobile devices, the more likely we are to be freed from restrictive fees and licensing costs.

At the recent Mobile World Congress, over 20 mobile phones based on Linux (most of them based on the LiMo platform) were announced. Likewise, open source telephony applications such as Asterisk, which does PBX tasks and has a large telephony applications toolkit, show a lot of promise.

Mobile content delivery has been ruled by the classic marketing model of selling cheap razors and very expensive razor blades (or should I conjure up HP's model of selling cheap printers and outrageously priced ink cartridges?). We buy our relatively inexpensive mobile devices, and then it's easy to get roped into expensive mobile content services. This needs to be overhauled.

That's a tall order for open source developers, and I don't know yet what effect Volantis' offering will necessarily deliver. Speaking generally though, it's good to see that more hardware and software platforms based on open source are starting to converge. It also seems to be a good trend for companies in a position to do so to deliver open source tools that can speak to large device libraries, because our trenchcoats and tote bags just keep getting more loaded with portable gadgets.

Do you think open source technologies could help us escape from restrictive commercial approaches to mobile content delivery?

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