Lineo Pays To License Real-Time Linux Capability

An Anonymous Coward writes: "Embedded linux vendor Lineo has apparently caved in to Victor Yodaiken, and become the first software company to publicly announce the licensing of Yodaiken's patented process for running a general purpose operating system (such as Linux) as a task under a real-time kernel(such as RTLinux or RTAI)."

There's a special report at LinuxDevices which includes . . .

• text of the Lineo press release
• comments from Victor Yodaiken
• news of a non-patented open source alternative ("Adeos")
• a reference list about RTLinux and the RTLinux patent
• a whitepaper about Adeos

There's an interesting quote where Yodaiken claims his patent will help open source."

Comments

Prior Art....Prior Art....Prior Art....

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't believe this patent is still unchallenged...
It was filed in 1997.

Way before 1997, I was working with a commercial RTOS that ran Windows 3.1 as the lowest priority task.

I would call that prior art... What's wrong here???
Comments anyone???

Anyone use a RT Linux in the field?

[JWhitlock]

I'm working for a company that works with hard real-time systems, and I've been pondering testing Linux where we are currently using a propriatary system. While I don't like the idea of supporting a software patent, I'd still consider it if it was cheaper and was truly hard real-time (certain tasks are guarenteed to execute within a certain amount of time).

Anyone have experience with one of these real-time Linux systems? How good are they at hard-real time tasks? I'd especially be interested in simulator applications.

Re:Anyone use a RT Linux in the field?

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out this article as well as others at ddj embedded site

real-time in user space

[tim_maroney]

Here's an interesting bit from an interview with Victor Yodaiken.

We have a new ability for real-time signal handlers in user tasks, where the user process makes an rtlinux_sigaction which will work like the POSIX sigaction, except the signal handlers run in realtime and there's an extension to allow us to catch periodic interrupts. As a result, the user process can designate a function to operate within hard real-time deadlines. And those functions run in the address space of that process, so they can share data with the process, and call functions libraries of the process.

That'll be very useful for high-bandwidth multimedia playback, which currently seems to be a problem for some UNIX-based systems such as Mac OS X. Is anyone looking at a Darwin port?

Tim

Not the only (or best) game on the market

[cduffy]

[Disclaimer: I work for MontaVista, and so am as biased as they come]

Interesting, that is. However, I doubt it'll gain them much.

MontaVista has been doing work on real-time Linux also -- not by putting another layer on top of or underneath the kernel, but by making it highly preemptible. Nigel Gamble (the fellow who did IRIX's real-time capabilities) has put together a patch which permits for some extremely low latencies. There are some other folks here working on the same thing. This has side-benefits for folks running SMP boxen, even if they don't need real-time capabilities, by making the spinlocks much more fine-grained. This patch is truly open source, and will hopefully some day make it into the mainline kernel.

We've recently inked a deal with Concurrent (http://www.ccur.com/corporate/pr/pr_208.html) that real-time folks might find interesting (as Concurrent has some interesting tools) and much of our real-time work has been known to readers of linux-kernel for quite some time. Additionally, our real-time patches are included in the kernels distributed with our products.

Note that I'm on a different project, so my knowledge of the real-time work we do is quite fuzzy. Suffice to say that we've got a highly preemptible Linux kernel already, and that it's still being improved. Hopefully someone else from MontaVista with better direct knowledge will also post.

Hey, what about a sense of history here

[Anonymous Coward]

Years ago, IBM had a realtime system kernel that ran on 360/370/43xx hardware called CP or control program. You ran the os of your choice on a virtual machine presented to you by CP. Oddly enough one of the uses for this was a port of UNIX to 360/370 type hardware. Others were typically VM-CMS for virtual machine cambridge monitor system aka virtual machine conversational monitor system, cics or "kicks" to name a few. Why is this not prior art where in one runs an ordinary os on top of a real time kernel? Why is the Yodaiken patent invalidated by the prior art of IBM? Would IBM license its rights to the same idea and reduction to art to the Linux community now that IBM is big on Linux? Why do we have to tolerate bogus patents and constant shake downs by those with the bogus patents. I thought the burden of showing the non-existance of prior art was on the potential patent filer and not the rest of us. Just asking. Does anyone else know of similar but different prior art for the so-called new idea of running an os as a task on a realtime kernel? Basically I am for innovation but it has the odd property that it has to be new.

This will heighten the distrust of the GPL.

[sethbag]

The problem with this, besides the fact that the claim is a very broad one which covers software which other people might want to write, is that it perpetuates the idea of the GPL as being like a virus. I happen to agree. The GPL attempts to infect software in such a way that it dictates what an author may or may not do with their own software. You may agree or disagree with this. What this patent case does is far worse. This is *not* a case of a software author having the choice to infect their code with the GPL and make use of someone else's code in their project, or having the choice *not* to infect their code with the GPL and simply write all their own code, or else go find code to use that isn't covered by the GPL. This is about someone who believes in the GPL so much that they want to extend to software they haven't even written. The patent holder wishes to construe his patent so broadly as to force all programmers anywhere who wish to develop certain kinds of software to be covered by the GPL. That is truly bad. I don't personally like the GPL, but I understand that all those who put their software under the GPL have the right to do so, and all those who use software covered by the GPL do so understanding the legal consequences, and that's their freedom of choice. But trying to *force* others to make their software be under the GPL whether they want to or not is truly despotic. Software patents are wrong, whether it's a company like Microsoft trying to force some company under the Microsoft Hegemony, or some GPL fanatic trying to force someone else under the GPL hegemony. I think the supports of Free Software, and the supporters of Open Source software, should stand for, at the very least, personal freedom, and the right of an individual to write code as they see fit and to license it as they see fit. Forceful tendencies are reminiscent of the company practices of some companies which we always seem to portray as the "enemy". Have we become the enemy?

Re:I don't see any problems

[Arandir]

The hypocrisy of the Free Software Movement(tm) has become so commonplace that it doesn't even surprise me anymore. First, since "software should not be owned" you're supposed to copyright it. Second, since software should be unrestricted, you should place it under a restrictive license.

Now, patents are evil, so lets all patent our ideas! This is not how patents should be! There should not be patents for algorithms, formulas or processes. Specifically, there should not be any patents for software unless they are non-algorithmic, novel, and unintuitive to a practitioner in the field.

No software covered by a patent can possibly meet the Free Software Definition.

nothing good will come of this

[janpod66]

I believe the patent is an example of the kinds of bad patents granted these days: technology that was already obvious to people decades ago and even used in some commercial systems, but not patented at the time because the patent system doesn't allow it and not written up at the time because it was too trivial.

It doesn't matter whether this patent is used to protect free software or whether the inventor allows GPL'ed software to use it, it is still a bad patent. It also doesn't matter that commercial entities are using patents that are just as bogus.

Now, a portfolio of good, strong patents used in this way might, in fact, help free software.