OpenedHand is a team of talented and creative people passionate about open source and embedded devices. We are committed to creatively pushing boundaries, innovatively solving problems and providing second to none customer service. We love what we do and our clients love our ability to deliver on time combined with an honest, down to earth approach.

We are located primarily in the UK’s capital city with a further presence in Paris and Helsinki. We work internationally with customers located around the globe.

History

Our roots reach back to 2000 with the then Compaq sponsored ‘handhelds.org’ - a cutting edge open source project set up to explore and improve Linux and open source on iPaq handheld devices. Involvement with the handhelds.org community by Matthew Allum, OpenedHand CEO and founder, lead him to create many unique software applications, starting with Matchbox, to improve the usability of Linux on handheld devices. Commercial interest in such innovations then led to the formation of OpenedHand.

We recognised the potential of technologies such as Linux, the X Window System and GTK+ on non-desktop platforms early on, and through our continuous research and development we have developed numerous projects to enhance the Linux embedded platform. This, together with our speciality in leveraging mature, historically desktop-based, technologies on embedded platforms, allows us to provide both ourselves and our customers with royalty-free, familiar and sustainable solutions. Our commitment to cutting edge research and development continues with Clutter, providing new user experience opportunities, and presaging the availability of GPU’s on mobile devices.

As OpenedHand has grown, so has the list of companies we’ve worked with; Nokia, Intel, One Laptop Per Child, OpenMoko, iRex, Access, STMicroelectronics and Vernier. In addition we’re a partner in the ACCESS Connect Ecosystem, an ST Microelectronics technology partner, and a Forum Nokia Champion.

Now 5 years young, OpenedHand has grown to a solid team of experienced open source developers with skills covering all areas of a device’s software stack. These skills have been used to aid clients with device creation, create new open source software projects, and contribute to various open source communities.

Culture

We are strong believers in open source, not least in its freedoms, but also the creativity and innovation it drives. Together with our own open source projects, we’ve also contributed to numerous open source projects and communities. We encourage and aid customers to take the same approach in becoming community members as to benefit all involved.

OpenedHand consists entirely of people with proven open source experience and involvement. Our team are well-respected members of several open source software communities have contributed to projects such as the Linux kernel, X Window System, Debian, OpenEmebedded, GNOME, GTK+, GStreamer, and Abiword.

OpenedHand is a significant contributor to GNOME and much of our work involves the re-use of GNOME technologies on non-desktop platforms. We employ numerous core GNOME developers, are members of the GNOME advisory board, a sponsor of the GNOME yearly conference, GUADEC, and were key in the formation of the GNOME Mobile and Embedded initiative.

Maybe you’ll catch us speaking at or attending various open source conferences around the world - we’ve presented at USENIX, FOSDEM, X Developer conference and GUADEC. If you do, please stop and say ‘Hi’ - we’re always happy to talk about what we do.

Find out more

You can find out more about what we do in the Work section, on our open source project site labs.o-hand.com, in the Q&A, or the OpenedHand blog. If what you’ve read sounds interesting and the kind of company you would like to work with, please get in touch.