Ahem, SyncML is the farthest thing from "open standard" as can be. In fact, many people (mostly the Free Software community), are staying far, far away from it, because it has very specific licensing requirements, due to patents that encumber the "standard", developed and owned by Pumasoft (from the "Intellisync" project).
Check the SyncML, SyncMLDS and various other mailing list archives for this topic coming up over and over and over, with very vague responses from people about where it can, and cannot be used.
But then again, HotSync is also just as far from an "open standard" as SyncML, but at least there's a patent-free, unencumbered, functional alternative that works on 11 platforms... today... and it isn't a product from Palmsource.
Why they insist on going down this NIH path again and again and again amuses me. They did it with POSE, then prc-tools, then Eclipse, and now HotSync.
Their FUD about it opening doors for OSX or Linux is just tripe.. we've had
pilot-link working on Linux since 1996, and in fact, we support more Palm handheld devices than Palm themselves do...
Over the last 2 years,
pilot-link has also been gaining support in commercial products like
MissingSync and
SyncBuddy, as well as several others.
So basically the move to SyncML is going to drop Linux users off the planet (or at least leave them with a very risky solution), and leave OSX users with Yet Another Product to install and convert over to, instead of using what already works on those platforms and environments. Instead of working with the existing support community, they once again decide to work against us.
Good going Palmsource.