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Open Source & Embedded

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the what-will-happen dept.

Embedded Geek writes "Jack Ganssle has posted a column at embedded.com pondering whether Red Hat and other open source companies serving the embedded community are due a shakeout similar to the dot com collapse. He cites Red Hat's March cuts in their embedded division and their losses of $80M to $140M a year. He admits, though, that because the embedded market is smaller and many companies are privately held it is difficult to get a pulse on what's going on behind closed doors. "

2 of 129 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Embedded Linux. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    For the sake of my customer, I'm posting this anonymously...

    I totally agree.

    I just helped produce a *very* cool consumer device basically running a modified redhat distro. Granted, it was a set-top box with no hard real-time requirements and lots of resources (Big HD, lots of RAM), but even if it wasn't, I still wouldn't have needed much help to get going.

    This is the strong point of open source - I don't need to purchase expensive service contracts and fancy software to get the job done. I have everything I need to be productive and make modifications to the system. I fully appreciate the contributions of the embedded linux vendors out there, but I really have to wonder if the service model ever made sense.

    As far as licensing issues... Ugh! The horse is long since deceased, STOP BEATING IT! This is a typical scare tactic used by closed source s/w vendors and BSD freaks. Sure, as a contractor I much prefer the BSD license, but structuring things to comply with the GPL isn't that difficult.

  2. Calling names... by anshil · · Score: 2, Informative

    Credit where credit is due.

    Erik Anderson maintains the busybox todoy.
    The employer you have spoken of is/was Lineo.

    --

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    Karma 50, and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt.