According to NetworkWorld, Palm, the maker of the popular Treo and other smartphone products, will launch a version of the Treo running PalmOS on top of a linux kernel. Although Palm will continue to make phones with both the current non-Linux-based PalmOS and Windows Mobile, according to The Register, the new Linux-based OS, purchased with the acquisition of China MobileSoft, is a part of Palm's look into growing lower-end devices, where the PalmOS requires too many system resources to run properly.

What makes Palm's expansion plans even more interesting is the debate over the GNU Public License version 3, which proposes that any manufacturer using a Linux-based system must give support to end-users who hack or modify their devices. Clearly, supporting this initiative would mean much higher support costs for Palm, potentially killing any profits from moving over to the less expensive Linux OS.