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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.
"
The Open Source movement, otherwise known as 'Free Software', has been a topic of considerable debate on the Internet's most controversial site. The majority of this debate has centered around the technical merits of the software, with the esteemed editors argueing against adopting Linux by employing the full depth of their considerable intellects, and the other side hurling death threats and similar invective. This has allowed many who would not otherwise receive quality information about Open Source software to be made aware of many of its ramifications, but one issue has been left alone: The overt racism that is deeply embedded in the movement.
Allow me to explain.
Alan Cox; Richard Stallman; Bruce Perens; Wichert Akkerman; Miguel DeIcaza.
What do you see in this list of names? Are there any African-Americans on it? Absolutely not, none of those names sound like one a self-respecting black person would have! No Maurice, no Luther, no Lil' Kim. There are many other lists such as this, you can see one here. Flip through each page, do you see anything other than white faces? Of course you don't, because Open Source and its adherents are ardent racists and they absolutely forbid access to the sacred 'kernel' by any person of color.
Lets look at another list, this time a compendium of the companies using Linux. Are there any black owned companies on that list? Nooooooo. How about these companies? They all have something to do with Open Source software, any of them owned by an African-American? No again. Here is an extensive collection of photographs from a LUG (Linux User Gathering) meeting, more can be viewed at that link. What is odd about these pictures, and every other photograph I have ever seen of a LUG meeting, is that there is not one single black person to be seen, and probably none for miles.
More racist overtones can be found by examining the language of Open Source. They often refer to 'white hat' hackers. These 'white hats' scurry about the Internet doing good, but illegal, acts for their fellow man. In stark contrast we find the 'black hat' hackers. They destroy the good works of others by breaking into systems, stealing data, and generally causing havoc. These two terms reflect the mindset of most Linux developers. White means good, black means bad. Anywhere there is black, there is uncontrollable destruction and lawlessness. Looking further we see black lists that inform other users of 'bad' hardware, Samba, an obvious play on the much hated Little Black Sambo book, Mandrake, which I won't explain except to say that the French are notorious racists. This type is linguistic discrimination is widespread throughout the Open Source culture, lampooned by many of its more popular sites.
It is also a fact that all Unix 'distros' contain a plethora of racist commands with not so hidden symbolism.
It can hardly be coincidence that the prime operating system of choice of the 'open source supremacists' - Linux, features commands which are poorly disguised racist acronyms. For example: 'awk' (All White Klan) , 'sed' (shoot nEgroes dead), 'ln' (lynch negroes), 'rpm' (raical purity mandatory), 'bash' (bring a slave home), 'ps' (persecute sambo), 'mount' (murder or unseat nubians today), 'fsck' (favored supreme Christian klan). I could go on and on about the latent racist symbolism in Linux, but I fear it would take weeks to enumerate every incidence.
Is there a single unix command out there that does not have some hidden racist connotation ? Suffice it to say that the racism pervades Linux like a particularly bad smell. Can you imagine the effect of running such a racist operating system on the impressionable mind ? I don't have to remind you that transmitting subliminal messages is banned in the USA, and yet here we have an operating system that appears to be one enormous submliminal ad for the Klan!
One of the few selling points of Open Source software is that it is available in many different languages. Browsing through the list I see that absolutely none are offered in Swahili, nor Ebonics. Obviously this is done to prevent black people from having access to the kernel. If it weren't for the fact that racism is so blatantly evil I would be impressed by the efforts these Open Sourcers have invested in keeping their little hobby lilly white. It even appears that they hate the Japanese, as some of these self proclaimed hackers defaced a web site with anti-Japanese slogans. Hell, these people even go all the way to Africa (South Africa mind you, better known as White Africa) and the pictures prove that they don't even get close to a black person.
Of course, presenting overwhelming evidence such as this is a bit unfair without some attempt to determine why these Open Sourcers are so racist. Much of the evidence I have collected indicates that their views are so deeply held that they are seldom questioned by the new recruits. This, coupled with the robot-like groupthink that dominates the culture allows the racist mindset to continue to permeate the ranks. Indeed, the Open Source version of a Klan rally, OSDN (known to the world as Open Source Developer's Network, known to insiders as Open Source Denies Negroes) nearly stands up and shouts its racist views on its demographics page. It doesn't mention the black man one single time. Obviously, anyone involved with Open Source doesn't need to be told that the demographic is entirely white, it is a given.
I have a sneaking suspicion as to why their beliefs are so closely held: they are all terrible athletes.
Really. Much like the tragedy at Columbine High School, where two geeks went on a rampage to get back at 'jocks', these adult geeks still bear the emotional scars inflicted upon them due to their lack of athletic ability during their teen years. As African-Americans are well known for their athletic skills, they are an obvious target for the Open Source geeks. As we all know, sports builds character, thus it follows that the lack of sports destroys character. These geeks, locked away in their rooms, munching on stale pizza and Fritos, engage in no character building activities. Further, they interact only with computers and never develop the level of social skill that allows normal people to handle relationships with persons of color.
Contrasted with the closed source, non-geeky software house Microsoft, Open Source has a long, long way to go.
FP BABY!
Golems rule, humans can suck it!
2. Start up meth lab
Please explain, thanks.
Thank you.
Hamas will wipe out you and your filthy kind. Praise Allah.
I thought RedHat made like $7.50 last year, or something! Now it's losing 150 million?! Quite a turnaround. :(
Maybe in dishwashers and stuff like that, but how much money is there to get in that marketsection? Not much I would suspect. In PDA's most will likely go with PocketPC from now on, in phones SymbianOS or smartphone.
So...I can't see where their market is? Anyone having any suggestions?
Right now, it's more like "Which company isn't having financial issues."
This stuff is getting rather old. Everyone is having a tough time being profitable and I don't believe "opensource" is the reason why RedHat is struggling. You name the company, products and services that were selling well in 97-00 are no longer doing that well. EMC and Sun which used to be very profitable at what they did are having to switch gears. Cisco is having it's share of problems. Software or hardware everyone is struggling and Opensource companies are still trying to figure out how to make a profit on a service model.
Folks this isn't news and really doesn't need to be argued over but Opensource isn't the next "Dot com bubble" that is going to burst. Opensource, Redhat, whatever... everything is having trouble right now. Let's not make this out to be more than it really is.
Open Source companies aren't really built on the hype and hyperbole of the DotComs. Having a substantial product allows for more longevity (sp?) than a web based retailer.
Think nothing is impossible? Try slamming a revolving door.
although we have seen a significant rise in those using a high-level OS in embedded systems ( e.g. embedded linux, windows ce - not to directly compare them! ) there's another issue to consider: a significant percentage ( myself, and other people I know
OTOH, I have also seen a rise in embedded programmers who want to use / are using C++ and java as their language of choice (as opposed to C and assembly) - so what do I know?
...Red Hat's profits will make a positive turn. With all the Anti-MS shanningans going on, many people are looking into the alternatives to see just what exactly MS is competing/"monopolizing" again. As such, people will soon be testing out the competition, and may find that they prefer them over their MS counterpart.
It will be very interesting to see how this all unfolds...
It is easier to offload failing operations in a market upturn than a downturn. At leats then somebody might pay you something for your company.
The sad reality is that - as the economy picks up speed - the number of failures/fire sales will also accelerate, at least in the short term.
I'm not saying RH is going to go - I doubt it - but a lot of "big players" could end up being sold for very little.
You don't need to be Microsoft to predict Open Source's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Open Source faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Open Source because Linux is dying. Things are looking very bad for Open Source. As many of us are already aware, Open Source continues to lose market support. Red ink flows like a river of blood. Red Hat is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Linux leader Linus states that there are many users of Linux. How many users of Linux are there? Let's see. The Linux counter extrapolates a figure of 125,613 registered Linux users to eighteen million actual users. A recent article put Linux at about 0.03% of the desktop market. This result and the discrepancy on the Linux counter are consistent with the fact that only about 1 in every 150 Linux newbies have successfully set up PPP.
Due to the troubles of ArsDigita, Eazel, Linuxcare, Cygnus, Aktopia -- abysmal sales and so on -- they all went out of business or were taken over by Red Hat who also sell the troubled OS. Now Red Hat is almost dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that Open Source has steadily declined in business credibility. Linux is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Linux is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. Open Source continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Open Source is dead.
Fact: Open Source is dying
STOP ME BEFORE I POST AGAIN!
are you racist?
are you racist ?
2. ???
3. Profit!
Need I say more?
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.
Cedric Balthazar Rotherwood
Sun Certified Programmer for the Java Platform +
System Admin. for Solaris
are you racist?
--
Players can get concussions from heading the ball, colliding, running into goal posts or hitting their heads on the ground
Everyone having problems now? No, microsoft is making profit, oracle also makes profit.
Microsoft and Oracle are everybody? What he means is the economy in general, as well as most of the tech industry is experiencing a down turn. Providing exceptions doesn't change the stats quo that is happening at the moment
Think nothing is impossible? Try slamming a revolving door.
Are you now or have you ever been a zionist? Zionism is racism.
Exposing the disgusting heterosexual-challenged life-style of Rob Malda is one of the favorite hobbies of the non-linux-using, heterosexual minority on Slashdot. However, Mr. Malda is a closet-homosexual when compared to the faggot-master -- Richard M. Stallman.
One popular story on Slashdot is about Mr. Malda's "taco-snotting" habit. While this is completely revolting to heterosexuals, I will now expose how this is quite trivial to the rest of the heterosexually-challenged Linux community, and childs-play for the chief pirate-smoker.
RMS was actually introduced to what is known as "Taco-snotting" at the tender age of 10, when his father witnessed his first erection and used the opportunity to corrupt him.
Since this is neither the time nor place to discuss the evolution of RMS's (homo)sexual tastes, we will jump ahead several years to the present.
Please, if you, or anyone else reading over your sholder is offended by the truth, do not read any further.
RMS's favorite sexual activity is to be fucked silly by five other Linux-using homosexuals. His favorites include Jon Katz, CmdrTaco, CowBoiNeal, Alan Cox, and Hemos. You can use your imagination to picture this horrific scene.
The worst part comes later. When everyone is almost ready to shoot, RMS jams a large funnel into his anus, and has Hemos pour one to two gallons of faggot cum into his colon. Any leakage is quickly picked up by the tounges of Mr. Malda and CowBoiNeal. Malda then proceeds to Taco-snot RMS with what he picked up.
While this is happening, CowBoiNeal and Alan Cox like to give RMS what is known as "Open-source ear-wax". Their penises happen to be tiny (and lubricated enough with ass cum) to slip into his ear canals, where they proceed to shoot their loads.
Its not over yet. For a long time, the Linux community was stumped with a quandary -- how could they get faggot cum to go INTO their penis?
Once the disgusting above actions have taken place, the remaining homosexual semen is gathered up into a container, which is attached through a special hook-up to an air compressor. The other end of this container has a cathader (sp?), which is greased up and inserted into Mr. Stallman's pee-hole. After some charging, the atrocious contents are blasted into his penis and reproductive system at 200 psi.
This device is, of course, open-source, and Freely available to any Linux faggot who dares to give it a shot.
This is why Linux is a worldwide problem. More later.
Trollaxor: Hey, RMS, what the fuck is up? I'm glad I got the opportunity to perform this interview with you. [coughs]
RMS: Hello, Mr. Trollaxor. I'm glad I got the opportunity to speak to another individual, interested in Free Software, that will eventually reach millions with the message I wish to express in this interview.
Trollaxor: Yeah, whatever. Let's get this over with... Firstly, let's talk about the origins of GNU. We all know it's Not UNIX. But where, exactly, did it come from? What was your prime inspiration for such a fine, grand, practical idea?
RMS: I'm glad you asked that.
Trollaxor: I'm not.
RMS: Ah, [laughs] You have a unique sense of humor, comrade Trollaxor!
Trollaxor: I know. And don't call me comrade. Or your friend, ally, brother, homey... I don't like you or your body odor. Now answer the question.
RMS: Ah [nervous laughter] yes... GNU. Well, after reading the works of Marx and Lenin, and having attended MIT and created several programs (GCC among them, of course) to which the source code was freely (as in speech, and beer) available, I began to see a certain communal effort begin to take shape among the software developers in the labs where I worked. However, the "administration" at MIT improperly thought that, since my works were created at MIT, they and their source belonged to MIT. This was in conflict with my embryonic philosphy--
Trollaxor: Hey, could you just cut your ideological bullshit and get to the part where you were taking a dump and farted out the GNU / Free Software concept as we know it today?
RMS: Ah, I don't think I know what you're referring to, Mr. Trollaxor. I certainly don't remember any toilet episodes being involved with the creation of GNU or Free Software...
Trollaxor: Oh really? It's hard for me to imagine a toilet not having been involved in the creation of Free Software. No, I'm talking about how one day you were sitting in a stall at MIT's grand restroom facilities, peeped thru the glory hole bored in the stall wall to look for customers, and saw a man's ass tatooed with a bull or a yak or something.
RMS: WHAT!?
Trollaxor: Okay, okay, okay-- Let's move on. How about your musical talents? From graphics posted at your homepage, it looks like you're fairly proficient on the flute. How did you obtain that talent?
RMS: That's rather simple: just a lot of practice and determination. The instruments you've seen me playing on my website are pan-pipes, actually, and not flutes. I began taking lessons from my father while him and I were still talking. I can play the flute, however, and--
Trollaxor: Skin-flute.
RMS: Excuse me?
Trollaxor: You heard me. Skin-flute. You play the skin-flute. That's why you're so good on those porn-pipes or whatever the Hell you called them. You are a skin-flute virtuoso and can play them like nobody's business. "Master skin-flutist RMS." Skin-flute.
RMS: Ah, I think this interview's getting a little off-track from its focus of Free Software and the GNU philosphy.
Trollaxor: Of course it is. And why the fuck do you begin every sentence with "ah?" Anyway, I'll indulge you. New question. What's all this I hear about you dropping acid like there's no tomorrow?
RMS: Hey, look, I'm willing to spend my time discussing and even debating about the GNU concept and Free Software. I'm a very busy man--
Trollaxor: No you're not.
RMS: I'm a very busy man and I simply cannot tolerate spending my valuable time digressing onto useless topics, much less helping you slander my good name--
Trollaxor: Shut up.
RMS: I believe we're talking at cross-purposes here and I wish to terminate this interview now.
Trollaxor: I believe your style is cross-dressing and I wish to inform you've been trolled. Do you know what a DGH is?
RMS: What? Excuse me? I said I wanted to stop this interview now!
Trollaxor: A "DGH" is a Dirty GNU Hippy. You're a DGH. You're a pinko Commy too. Learn to bath, shave, and wipe your ass properly, and you'll make it in general society. But at least you aren't ESR so yo have something going for you already. Good day, Corporal Crapola of the GNU Commando!
I'm flying over to London next week and while my trip is about business I'm looking for some rough action too. So, where in London could I get a good, hard shag?
As far as I know, Cygnus was profitable, at least in the Golden Years just before Open Source more or less hit the mainstream press. There is an interview at developerWorks in which Cygnus Solutions cofounder Michael Tiemann claims that they were profitable until the venture capitalists came, since investors "give you money so you can actually accelerate the rate of spending versus revenue".
It's probably not too easy to turn back the clock for Red Hat, as there is increasing competition on the GCC customization market, where companies pay immense sums for adaption of GCC to certain microprocessor platforms and support for that GCC derivate (at least they paid these sums when Cygnus didn't have much competition!).
Turn on the telly and watch the BBC World right now!
49 posts at -1
Way to go trolls!
$ man woman
No manual entry for woman
Red Hat's March cuts in their embedded division and their losses of $80M to $140M a year.
Do I need to explain the concept of "Goodwill" yet again? Why do people keep this shit up? Are they holding short positions in RHAT?
Goodwill is the amount of money a company pays for another company, that is above the value of the tangible assets of the aquired company. This may include brand names, patents, and other intangibles. If a company buys a company that turns out to be overpriced later on, then the buying company will have lots and lots of goodwill that must eventually be charged against earnings.
Red Hat did not lose those large amounts of "real assets", rather, almost all of that "loss" was a write down of goodwill from previous aqusitions.
Look at it this way.
1) RHAT IPOs
2) RHAT stock becomes grossly overvalued
3) RHAT makes a secondary offering, cashing in on their grossly overvalued stock in a big way.
4) RHAT goes on a buying spree, spending their money that they got for free, buying companies like Cygnus.
5) Cygnus was also pretty overvalued, so a lot of goodwill ends up in the "assets" column of RHATs balance sheet.
6) RHAT has to write off chunks of this goodwill against earnings later on.
The key is that RHAT got this money for free. Had they not made the secondary offering, they wouldn't have had the money to make the aqusitions in the first place. Sure, that money ultimately came from idiot investors that paid $200 a share for RHAT, but it didn't come from any direct business or financing activities that had an opportunity cost for RHAT (such as debt financing).
So no, they aren't losing those staggering numbers each quarter, in fact they are breaking even for the last 3 quarters or so.
Goowill can be abused. "One-time-charges" can be abused (see Cisco writing off billions of real, tangible, inventory).... but in this case... there is no money lost, just worthless monopoly money that no longer exists, and hasn't existed for years, subtracted from a column on a balance sheet.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Stuck in a small box
CPU crunches numbers:
Use Redhat or not?
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.
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
Bruce Perens.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Lunix sux lolololololololollollolloloo!!1111111111
So I'm a pervert. Welcome to the Internet.
Karma Whorin' Galor'n
NoMoreNicksLeft
"When will he stop?" Pon-
dered the troll
"Super-slash-poetry
doesn't amuse me; my
super-slash-trollery's
withered my soul!"
DR. LUNIX TORVALDS
TEL: 234 8023132472, FAX: 234 - 1 - 7595586
HELSINKI, FINLAND
Dear Sir,
I write you this letter of request for partnership which I hope you will give your urgent attention. We worked as members of the Operating System / Penguin Abuse Committee inaugurated by the present Democratically Elected Committee of the Electronic Frontier Foundation headed by General Richard Stallman (rtd). We are empowered to deligently review, re-appraise, scrutinize and approve feces payments to Linux users who executed *BSD devils under the past operating system regime and our work is almost concluded.
In the course of our work we discovered this fecal matter, which resulted from grossly over-used toilets, which were executed for the GNU is Not Unix Corporation (GNU) by a consortium of several Foreign Companies such as:
VA SOFTWARE, RED HAT, INC., SUSE GMBH. AND A JOINT VENTURE OF MANDRAKE AND CALDERA GMBH FOR:
This amounts to the tune of 100 tons of fecal matter, but was over-invoiced to 150 tons of feces. And we deliberately approved these fecal deposits and all Lunix users have been paid with these penguins executed and since abused, leaving the large amount of Eric S Raymond's magnificent deposit floating in the escrow pool of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) ready to be paid for the sexual services from the products in item number [2] as stated above. Before digressing further I would want you to know that our GNU General Public License forbids us from owning any money or having heterosexual relationships whilst in GNU service; hence we are contacting you to be part of this transaction.
We intend to use your anus as a front to get the over-invoiced amount of 50 tons of feces out of the BSD sewers and into a designated toilet by you. Not regarding your field of specialization (sphincter expansion) you are going to forward us with any name that we will claim executed the sewaging services in the turn around maintenance of the Penguin fecal abuse farms mentioned above. All logistics are in place and all modalities worked out for the smooth insertion of the feces within ten to fourteen days of commencement after the receipt of a semen deposit from you. You are going to get 25% of the feces by posing as the owner of this fecal matter, while my colleagues and I will get 70% to ourselves with which we wish to invest in Agriculture and Farming in conjunction with you (and 5% will be set aside for the use of both parties for all excretions incurred locally and internationally during the realisation of this transaction, including toilet paper). As a matter of fact you are expected to take a sincere inventory of your toilet paper.
It is imperative to let you know that I am also a keen scatologist, with qualifications world-wide.
Despite research carried out to verify and ascertain your personality we can only move ahead if you can further assure us of your anal capacity and homosexuality and promise to help and treat this proposal with utmost confidentiality. We are men of proven integrity in our various fields who have put in 22 - 30 years of fecal matter in the toilets of our country; we are therefore averse to having our image and anuses widened. That is why we should acknowledge the fact that confidentiality is the key to the smooth insertion of this infection free transaction.
Awaiting your earliest positive response.
Best regards and remain blessed.
DR. LUNIX TORVALDS
P
I agree that open source is a shared cost centre. One of the "disruptive" things about it is that small companies can benefit to the same degree as large companies.
In effect, this lowers the barriers to entry. Could a small company fund the development of an operating system? No. But anyone can take a Linux distro...
So does Anonymous Coward have good karma?
However, just so people don't think it's just a Linux thing... Annasoft, a leading Microsoft embedded partner, just died.
Linux has taken a huge percentage of the "do it yourself" market which was actually about 60% of embedded. Of commercial embedded development, WindRiver used to own about 60%, but that number is going down fast. Linux is expected to win more new design wins in the next year than WindRiver, making it the #1 choice for new designs. An important thing to remember in embedded is that a large percentage of the market has legacy deployments in the market already and those will continue to be VxWorks (or pSOS) for the forceable future. But Linux is here to stay...
n/t
... just don't want to use embedded linux, to avoid giving their source code around.
Of course, I do have my doubts that a company like Red Hat makes sense. Open source is best for specialized, highly-skilled consultants and professionals. It also makes sense for a few hardware vendors and large, established consulting shops like IBM. But companies like Red Hat and VA Linux aren't in that league.
I haven't got any spam trying to sell me embedded engineering manpower yet, like I got several for web design, Virusal Basic and other markets that have crashed recently.
I wonder, though, why companies aren't giving more money to the people whose software they use. Has Bruce Perens ever received a single penny for busybox? From any of the companies that use it? I don't know, but it certainly hasn't happened for me. It's sad that companies using open source software usually only spend money on training people who never did any embedded stuff rather than on the people whose ready-made software they are going to rip.
I work for the largest T&M company in the world. Our highest level managment has commanded that all future products will be based on MS XP. This is compleatly assinine. All of the objections of the firmware engineers are being ignored. The reasones for using MS, as told by our managment are all clasic MS lies. It appears that MS has gotten to one or two of our costomers and promised the ignorant managment a bunch of things they can not deliver. We are being told that a few of our costomers are requesting MS based instruments. I used to be one of my companies customers. I know that few engineer gives a shit what OS the Box uses as long as it works. The engineers who know a little about software would object heavily to MS based instrumentation. Especialy with the draconian XP liscence. I feal that our company is being threatened by the BSA into this. The whole situations is compleatly absurd. Our firmware experts had decifded that Linux was the best way to go. We have several new products that will be Linux based. Managment was going to try to shut these down but they are too important and too far in the development cycle to be redone with XP. The few products that we have produced with Windows have been development nightmares. The teams involved documented this. The most succesfull, an O-Scope, would have been even more succesfull if it had used Linux. As it is they work well on the desk top but are unusable in test racks., Blue Screen of death!
With the XP liscense, our customers will be forced to use XP based test rack controlors. The natural choice for our customers would be to use Linux, which many are. MS is deathly afraid of this. If non-techincal assemberers and testers, and secretaries start using Linux, they will see that MS is lieing and will see that there products are junk. MS whants to prevent the common man from using Linux at work. They may decided to use it at home.
I am now convinced that MS is using the BSA to take over Test and Measurment. If they can get to my company, they can get to any. The BSA should be refered to as the MS getsapo.
From a standard home user, I can see the benefits of using an embedded Linux product. Easy to alter, you have the source there, and you can really make it work with your hardware. Beats paying Microsoft to get a lesser configuration.
But other than that, I still think Linux should stay off the desktop. Too hard to use, the applications (KDE for example) are too.. let me say.. childish with no flair and basically look like crap. Not to also mention that more than half the applications don't work. That is why Windows will always dominate the desktop market. Sure it costs more, but their products are polished. Something I believe that the Linux developers don't want to have.. polished products.
But who cares about Linux and Windows! Mac OS X is the real future of the desktop!
eCOS, BSD, and RT Linux have established a clear and viable alternative to proprietary solutions, and they are expanding the extent to which embedded systems are becoming source-code compatible with one another.
For medium-to-large systems that could actually take advantage of 32-bit open source solutions, suddenly QNX, pSOS, and the others are talking price like never before. I'm sorry if Red Hat is losing money, but at least they've established a market that stops the established vendors from locking you in and gouging you.
Open source solutions have created an environment where the choice is no longer which vendor to be locked-in to because now there is the none-of-the-above choice. So now if you go with QNX because it is indeed the best option, they still have to be nice to you because you can walk. Everybody wins.
So the point is that the price of all embedded kernel source has equalized, proprietary or otherwise, the vendors now all compete on service, turn-key solutions, and technical merit.
What about costs. That is what businesses understand.
n do ws_tco_comparison.pdf
Independent study of Cybersource, Australia.
http://www.cyber.com.au/cyber/about/linux_vs_wi
Companies need long-term planning for their investments. Personally, I'd rather pay $1000 for software knowing that it goes to a company that is most likely going to be supporting the software for the next 2 years, than $500 for a package where this is not likely at all. Unfortunately, only very few O.S. projects come with some sort of established development process that guaratees that they're going to be "supported" (bug fixes...) in the next 2 years.
Also, the best Open Source programs are so popular and widespread that you get your support for them elsewhere (contracting...), so money spent by companies "on" these products goes to those other people. Finally, don't expect a company to donate money if it doesn't have some visible positive effect on the company itself ...
IMHO, Open Source developers need to find business models that work well together with their products, e.g. web server software developers re-selling SSL certificates (I don't care where I get mine, and I don't mind paying slightly more if the money goes to the right people), compiler tools programmers offering affiliate links to recommended books about programming languages etc. ... It's much easier to say "thank you" by chosing you as the reseller of something (not merchandise, unless it's something really useful!) you're going to buy anyway at more or less the same price, than by donating money with nothing in return.
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
Re-reading your comment, I noticed that you actually meant companies who included Open Source software in their commercial software packages... My rant wasn't specific to that situation, but to the use (not commercial re-distribution) of Open Source software by companies in general. So, it's just a rant ;-)
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
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.
It seems naive to gauge the success of embedded linux by redhat profits. Most embedded engineers know
a thing or two about software (duh). Its pretty simple to get a kernel up with busybox and uclibc.
The point is, it doesn't require any consultants or outside services for a competent engineer to build an embedded linux system, so the succes of linux is not dependant on Red hat, Montavista, etc.
Wasabi Systems, an embedded NetBSD company, is doing really well, last time I heard.