The Tizen Developer Conference (TDC) 2017 holding in San Francisco, U.S. will be wrapping up today. The annual gathering has seen industry leaders, as well as developers, service partners and others involved in the Tizen platform, gather to brainstorm. One topic that was discussed extensively during the course of the conference was the Tizen 4.0 OS, the next-generation in the firmware. As the main developer of Tizen, Samsung showcased its latest advancements related to the OS and several Samsung executives also presented keynote speeches on the same top.
At the backstage, Samsung’s Vice President, Hyogun Lee, who also chairs the Tizen Technical Steering Group, was interviewed and the VP shared his thoughts on Samsung’s ongoing vision for the platform. Mr Lee, in the interview session, unveiled Samsung’s vision in developing Tizen 4.0, disclosing that his company’s key achievements have been the reinforcement of the Application ecosystem by making the development experience easier. He also stated that the tech giant created a device ecosystem to assist any device maker in creating their own IoT device. One key point the VP noted is the flexibility to configure and customise on different hardware which the Tizen OS offers. He pointed out also that Tizen is an open source project, it will also benefit manufacturers other than Samsung.
VP Lee did not leave us in doubt when he was asked how the industry and community of developers have reacted to Samsung’s decision to open sources for Tizen. He disclosed that Tizen is presently the most successful Linux-based embedded OS in the world going by the record of sales growth generated thus far. He added that Samsung is also committed to supporting companies who are working to commercialise Tizen products based on our own experiences.
The VP also elaborated that Tizen 4.0 extends the ecosystem of applications by introducing features such as .NET as a new framework. The .NET framework allows Tizen developers to enjoy C#, the industry’s leading programming language and Visual Studio, the most loved IDE (Integrated Development Environment). He also stated that the Tizen 4.0 offers design tool options such as Adobe XD. According to him, Samsung will begin deploying .NET to Samsung TVs later this year and that with .NET on the Smart TV, Tizen developers will be able to build beautiful .NET apps fully leveraging Samsung TV’s various capabilities.
Speaking of the devices that already feature the Tizen OS, Mr Hyogun Lee disclosed that apart from Samsung’s smart TVs, the Z-Series smartphone, wearables and the Family Hub refrigerators, and a wide range of Samsung devices are currently using Tizen. He added that in the near future, more home appliances such as our Robot Cleaner, washing machines, air conditioners, and network speakers will be using Tizen.
The interview also touched on the Samsung’s efforts in reinforcing the safety of Tizen. He disclosed that Samsung has been putting its best efforts to ensure that despite the Tizen OS becoming an open source code, it remains secure.This, he said, includes using static code analysis tools, tightening code review, and continuously monitoring the security vulnerabilities of Tizen and related open source software and patching them regularly. Some of the patches are tightly coupled with the Tizen code review system, with our aim to prevent vulnerable code from being merged into the Tizen code base at the first step of development.
One important point which he gave to clear things up is that the Tizen open source itself is not the exact same code that goes into a product such as its Smart TV or phone. Instead, the product teams take the code from Tizen.org and adapt, optimize and secure it again based on the specific needs of the product. This process includes removing unused code paths, and manual penetration testing as well as hardening the system against specific known attack vectors.
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