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QNX Now Free For Non-Commercial use
Glytch writes: "QNX is now offering the QNX Realtime Platform operating system for free for non-commercial use for x86 machines. Available installation methods include a Windows 9x executable, an ISO image, and a QNX4 installation archive. Pretty much like Be, Inc. did with BeOS 5." And like Sun has with Solaris, to boot. Would it be that surprising to find Windows soon available "for non-commericial use"?
QNX is a great OS. We've been working with it in our computer labs trying to come up with a good web browser that doesn't have to use a HD (we are using it from the CDROM). For those of you who haven't seen QNX, they have a complete OS + web browser running on a 3.5" floppy. Pretty impressive, IMHO.
It is a nice OS, also, because it doesn't create extra partitions. There is a large file that it stores under a directory (the image file) which is loaded on bootup. So if you ever decide to 'uninstall', I believe you can just delete the file.
Great OS. I hope to see more for it and its good to see that it is free now.
-Frijoles-
Would it be that surprising to find Windows soon available "for non-commericial use"?
Yes. It'd be an incredible event. MS has used its OS as its main tool for leverage over OEMs, hardware manufacturers, etc. The second it becomes free for 'home' use (or whatever), OEMs don't have to ship it anymore, which means they save a bundle of cash, and aren't tied into restrictive trade agreements with MS anymore, since everybody can just pick up a free copy of Windows for non-commercial use. Heck, I bet you could probably get free copies of Windows for just shipping costs from everywhere. Giving up its main means of leverage would be ludicrous.
And as an aside: The REAL reason why BeOS, QNX and others are free for 'personal' use is simple. They are the hunters, going after the market leader. Not necessarily everywhere, but certainly in certain niches. Not everybody wants to use BeOS, but for people who deal with media a lot (MacOS, IRIX?), it could be an alternative. And look, those people can run BeOS for free, at home. Wonder if they'll want to use it at work as well?
Solaris is another thing entirely. Yeah, it's semi-free (I think Sun still charge $50 or so for 'media costs'), but the reason why Solaris was made free for personal use is because Linux is destroying any kind of 'personal/home' UNIX base there ever was. If you want UNIX at home or just to try for a small, non-commercial server.. hell, xyzBSD or Linux are ideal choices. If Solaris is free, though, some people might reconsider. And if you need the much-hyped 'enterprise OS features' that both Sun and MS claim Linux/xyzBSD don't have, Solaris has a 'big-league' image.
In the end, it's pretty simple: why would they want to give it away? BECAUSE THEY HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE. VERY few people were actually BUYING BeOS or QNX for personal (ie non-commercial) use. Solaris was a different thing in academia etc. but the big money is with servicing contracts and hardware anyway. QNX is a purely professional embedded platform so far. So NOBODY has anything to lose from making it free for non-commercial use - rather the opposite: they entice people to try it, and ideally to use it in professional situations, where Sun/QNX/Be *will* get money.
Now, look at it again: Why would MS ever dream of making one of its cash cows free? They only have to lose. They've been able to *raise* the price of their software - over the last 10 years, the only part of a computer that's become more expensive is the OS, namely WindowsXYZ!
Windows for free. Good lord. What next, RMS agrees to work for the MS PR division?
Alex T-B
St Andrews
I remember BeDope posted the following back when BeOS went free. I thought you might like to read it...
Folks were arguing about whether "free like beer" was any good compared to "free like speech". Be Dope researches composed a scientific test to answer this question once and for all.
Be Dope CTO, Dr. Doxie, took her staff to a local computer show armed with several kegs of beer and hundreds of copies of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, which guarantees the right to free speech.
The results were surprising and conclusive.
"Fully 99 out of every hundred people chose Free Beer over Free Speech," reported Doxie. "In some cases, the subject would begin stressing the importance of free speech, but all the while they'd be eyeing the free beer. In most cases, the free beer won in the end."
"We spent many hours in the lab testing both beer and speech," said Sakoman. "Those who consumed free beer reported feeling satisfied and sometimes 'buzzed'," said Be, Inc. COO Steve Sakoman. "Those speaking free afterwards rarely reported any benefits, and in fact would sometimes complain of a dry mouth or scratchy throat."
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Colin Davis
Sun now offers compressed ISO images for download, as mentioned in another comment. No charge, just a simple license.
From The official FAQ:
No, it's not GPL, but not everything of value in the world is released under the GPL. Get over it.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
Microsoft could probably still make lots of money giving Windows away to consumers but still making OEMs pay for it. It's not like OEMs have the option of not including an OS in today's PC market.
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This space unintentionally left unblank.
QNX is a real-time OS, based on a microkernel. It's useful in situations with hard RT requirements... where something like Linux or BSD currently would be inappropriate (Unix is not RealTime).
Hard RealTime systems are extremely difficult to write, there's probably no way in hell that QNX will be GPL'ed, there's a hell of a lot of investment there. This same point came up in "GPL 3.0 Concerns in Embedded World".
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
If Windows ever goes free for home, or any other type of, use, I am sure their will be a great outcry on Slashdot and maybe in the justice department about how Micro$oft is destroying competition by giving its product away for free.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
When I first read this, I thought, as probably most of you did: "Yeah, right! Forget it!". But then, I gave it a second thought: after all, Microsoft already does provide some free software, IE being an oustanding example.
The question is: why is IE free? I guess the answer has something to do with crushing a certain competitor, combined with the fact that Microsoft can afford to provide IE free of charges.
Now, what if the competition on the OS front starts to threaten Microsoft? We have seen that recently, they have changed their stance towards Linux, considering it a serious threat...
So, given the above, and considering that Microsoft would still make money on commercial licences, and of course on their other products, does the "free for non-commercial use" Windows idea still sound stupid?
Another question I'd like to raise: if Windows does become free (let's say for any use, to broaden the topic), what would the consequences be?
I code, therefore I am.