Wind River is joining Intel to develop an open source Linux platform to your car and shake up the auto industry by bringing greater innovation, efficiency and development speed to the emerging in-car infotainment market.

Wired.com reports, Wind River will make the specs and code for the platform available on the open source vehicle infotainment site Moblin.org in August. The idea is to have vendors and Linux users collaborate on software, contribute code and debug programs. The platform is optimized for Intel’s new Atom processor, which Wind River says is perfect for in-car applications that require intensive multimedia and graphic support in a low-power environment.

Automakers have been known to work with one another when it suits their purposes, but they aren’t known for taking a collective approach to anything. And their tendency to be cautious means things tend to happen at a snail’s pace — exactly the opposite of what happens in the electronics and software industries. But BMW and mega-suppliers Bosch and Delphi have lined up behind Wind River, which says the platform will offer plug-and-play compatibility for products like Nuance’s voice communications, Parrot’s Bluetooth applications and Gracenote’s music management system.

“Mobile infotainment products are undergoing a dramatic technology shift as multimedia, communications and consumer devices converge in the automobile,” says Robert W. Schumacher, head of advanced products and business development at Delphi. He says a  Linux-based open source platform “breaks down silos of adjacent industries” and could hasten the marriage of consumer electronics to the automobile.