Open Source & Embedded

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. "

Comments

Re:I think....

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree that people will try alternatives. But to be realistic, what alternatives are there really?

How many open source project does it exists thats really finished? It like one long beta period, and instead of getting things finished people implements new features instead.

Sad, but true.

Embedded Linux.

[cbr372]

One problem with embedded Linux solutions is that developers are compelled to release their modifications as per the GPL. Whether or not this is a good thing (and there are some very good reasons for both GPL-style and closed-source software, beyond the scope of this comment), some companies just don't enjoy the thought of having to release the source code for their embedded products.

Embedded BSD is the solution to that problem, and in fact various forms of embedded BSD have been around for a long time and are going strong. Perhaps if Linux changed its license from GPL to LGPL it might help in this situation, to gain more acceptance from the business community.

Re:I think....

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a saying the the software development industry and that is when you have done 90%, you have 90% to go. This means that when you have implemented 90% of the functionality you still have 90% of the job left to do. There is much truth in this.

This is the problem with almost all open source software, noone is interrested in really make a FINISHED product thats usable. It's time-consuming, boring and hard to finish a product and most people aren't very interrested in beeing bored on their free time.

Fluff

[Zombie]

So there's no reference (by name) to any other company doing embedded open source development, no attempt to determine why RedHat and other (U.S. only) companies laid off staff... Sorry, but this article is fluff.

I work for an (open source technologies) embedded development consultancy company. The only thing limiting our growth is finding competent personnel. Demand exceeds what we can deliver by a large factor. Linux has taken the embedded development world like a tornado grabbing a trailer. I see no bubble building up here.

Of course, other companies may have been less realistic in their growth perspectives and may have had more venture capital to burn.

Open Source is Not A Business

[Bruce Perens]

Sure, a number of companies will shake out. Some people blame this on the Open Source nature of the software, but they are really missing the point. Open Source is not a business, it's a cost-center that is shared among a large number of collaborators. A cost-center is less than half of your business plan. Open Source is non-differentiating for your business, because everybody else can offer the same thing, and thus the best plan a business can have for it is to use it to reduce cost so that they can spend more on their differentiators and profit centers.

In making a business plan, you will need to figure out what your differentiators and profit centers will be. It's obviously not going to be software sales - the folks who tried a royalty-based embedded system based on Linux went out of business faster, because they had free competition. In general it will be consulting services, and this is going to be a difficult business in a slow economy as businesses will try to do more with their own engineers. Businesses also have an incentive to use their own engineers for embedded work, as they don't want to be in the situation of losing the recipie for one of their own products. That can happen more easily when an outside vendor does the work.

I created the user-mode half of most Linux embedded systems - a program called busybox. It's everywhere. I used the GPL. Because of that decision, the person who put the most effort into maintaining that program, after me, is still working on it and is able to offer his consulting services on it. Had I not used the GPL, he would have had to give it up when his previous employer was one of those shaken out. I have a lot more sympathy for him than the employer. Also, had I used a license other than the GPL, the program would not have become an open standard for embedded - everyone would have been making their own proprietary additions rather than cooperating. And I didn't care that companies could not lock in a revenue capture on busybox - why should I?

I think Debian has the best "business plan" of any Linux distribution: don't even try to make money. The people who use Debian as a cost center (HP, for example) pay for its development, and they are very clear about what their profit centers are. This is why I think Debian will eventually end up on top.

Bruce