Access Quietly Admits ALP's Release Date Has Slipped

When Access Systems officially unveiled an early version of its upcoming operating system in February, the company said its goal was to get the full version of this software to its licensees by the end of this year. Now, the company has quietly admitted it won't make this deadline.

This upcoming operating system, currently being called the Access Linux Program (ALP), will be based on Linux and capable of running legacy Palm OS applications.

Last week, Access slipped a notice that licensees won't be getting ALP before the end of 2006 onto a page on its web site. Instead, the company now hopes they will get it before the middle of next year.

This makes is unlikely that any new handhelds or smartphones based on this operating system will debut before fall of 2007.

At the same time that ALP is handed over to its licensees, Access will announce what this operating system's official name will be.

The actual statement from the company is, "We will announce the official name of the ACCESS Linux Platform when we announce that it is available to our licensees and developers—expected sometime in the first half of 2007."

ALP vs. Garnet

When devices based on ALP are released, they will have to compete with ones running an earlier version of the Palm OS.

Access (formerly PalmSource) owns the rights to the Palm OS and is developing ALP as the next generation of this operating system, but last week the company sold Palm, Inc. a perpetual license to a previous version, Palm OS Garnet.

Palm intends to use Garnet in some form in models well into the future. If this company has plans to develop ALP-based handhelds or smartphones, it hasn't said anything about it.

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Via Software Everywhere