Laurens, author of
Sunrise,
explains in his blog why he believes that by moving to Linux, PalmSource will ultimatively loose its competitive advantage and may not even survive in the long run:
Vendors choose Linux because it's free and PalmSource will have a hard time selling their proprietary layer at a profitable level to companies accustomed to paying next to nothing for the OS. As it stands, Linux devices do not have UIs as elegant as that of PalmOS, but that might still change. PalmSource might find themselves blazing the trail for UIs in Linux devices, only to find themselves caught up by an open-source alternative sponsored by device vendors.
One month ago, Palm OS users were
confronted with the news that Laurens would not put his energy and resources into developing a Palm OS-based version of his upcoming Sunrise viewer. A few days after his announcement, PalmSource
reported that the company intended to port Palm OS to Linux (also see our
insider scoop).
There is a lot of speculation about the future of PalmSource and its operation system Palm OS, and I guess speculation will continue until we'll finally see (if we ever will!) a next-generation Palm OS device.