Palm pays $44 million for license to Palm OS code
updated 12:30 pm EST, Thu December 7, 2006
Palm buys back OS code
Palm has agreed to pay $44 million for a permanent licence to the source code for Palm OS Garnet, which is currently owned by the Japanese firm Access. Palm lost the rights to its cellphone OS when it created a separate software outfit called PalmSource, which decided to remake the OS with a Linux core. This attracted Access, who bought PalmSource in September of 2005. Under the new deal Palm can modify Garnet in whichever way it likes, but for the moment, both companies have agreed to retain code compatibility. The latest phone to use a variant of the Palm OS is the Treo 680.
