CELF was formed by Sony, Hitachi, NEC, Royal Philips Electronics, Samsung Electronics, Sharp, Toshiba, and Matsushita Electric Industrial through its Panasonic brand, in July 2003 and now boasts more than 50 members.
The organization said establishing itself as a non-profit organization will allow it greater flexibility to fund open source developments and to create relationships with other organizations committed to its goal of promoting Linux for consumer electronics devices.
CELF maintains a collection of Linux modifications for use in consumer dynamics as well as the CELF specification and reference implementation. In late January it will host its second plenary meeting and first US technical conference.
Sony vice president Scott Smyers, who had been chair of the CELF steering committee, is now chair of CELF, with representatives of Panasonic, with the rest of the board made up from representatives of IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, LG Electronics, Motorola, NEC, Nokia, Royal Philips Electronics, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, and Toshiba.
