Interview of our CTO, Sunil Motaparti, by Jennifer Cloer, Linux Foundation
The Linux Foundation has recently welcomed a variety of new members. I had the opportunity this week to talk to one of our newest members, KeyPoint Technologies. In this Q&A, the company's CTO Sunil Motaparti explains what is OpenAdaptxt and how Linux and open source software figure into the KeyPoint Technologies' strategy.
What is KeyPoint Technologies? OpenAdaptxt?
Motaparti: At KeyPoint Technologies, we are a team that is passionate about combining linguistics and computing to deliver new experiences for consumers. Our initial focus lies in improving the current text input experiences across all types of connected devices like smart phones, feature phones, tablets, connected TVs and IVI systems. We are a trusted partner for OEMs, platform providers and developers looking to innovate and deliver an enhanced user experience in this area. We are privately owned, with our headquarters in Scotland and offices in India and the US.
OpenAdaptxt is an open source community project that we launched recently by contributing key technology and language assets developed for our flagship, best-in-class Adaptxt prediction and error correction engine. With OpenAdaptxt, our goal is to facilitate the development of a leading, open, next-generation text input platform and standard, enabling different players in the ecosystem to improve the quality and effectiveness of text input experiences across different types of connected devices.
We are actively inviting members of the open source community, hobbyists, developers, linguists, OEMs and application developers to join us in the project and accelerate its development.
Why did you decide to open source your text input technology?
Motaparti: The simple answer is that we believe this is the only way forward.
When we started working on text input technologies, our discussions with OEMs, end users and developers all indicated that they were experiencing lots of pain points around text input and most of the issues came down to the proprietary monopolies that have been established in this space over the last decade or so. We felt that simply introducing new technology while pushing the problems with the development, innovation and business models under the carpet would not allow us to address all the pain points effectively.
On the other hand, we saw a number of benefits by approaching the problem from an open source perspective. At a high level, we believe it will facilitate more innovation, increase the reach of the innovation to more users speaking more languages, lower costs for everyone, avoid vendor lock-ins again, etc.
What are the supported platforms for the project and the target devices?
Motaparti: Currently, OpenAdaptxt works on Linux-based platforms targeted at ARM and X86 (e.g., Android, MeeGo, etc.) powered devices. All devices that require a reasonable amount of text input from end users would be potential targets.
