To fix proprietary incompatibilities
MANUFACTURERS of home automation and entertainment electronics have established a consortium called Amigo to help integrate their multiple proprietary systems,
Heise reports.
The Amigo consortium of 15 partners includes France Telecom, Microsoft, the Netherlands' Philips, Spain's Telefonica, and research organisations in five European countries including those mentioned plus Germany and Greece.
They've developed a set of standardised open source
software to serve as middleware for integrating home consumer devices, computer systems and networks. To mark the release of the software as open source, the consortium has launched a competition it terms the Amigo Challenge.
Prizes of 750, 500 and 250 euros will be awarded in each of the three Amigo Challenge categories. In the Hardware category, prizes will be awarded for linking hardware to the Amigo software layer. In the Software category, the objective is to create a new service or application using the Amigo software as a base. The Free Style category is for everything else that's doesn't neatly fit in either the Hardware or Software category.
The Amigo Project has the support of the EU government. The open source Amigo software, examples and documentation are available for download.
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