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Embedded Linux Journal Ceases Print Publication
Anonymous Coward writes "SSC Publications (the publisher of Linux Journal) today announced that the May/June 2002 issue will be the final stand-alone print edition of Embedded Linux Journal (ELJ). Future ELJ content will now be "embedded" into Linux Journal, as a monthly feature section. ELJ's website, ELJonline, will continue to regularly feature new embedded Linux articles, reviews, news, and contests."
Former roommate Don Marti (also the former Editor for ELJ) told me that "Desktop Linux has learned a lot from Embedded Linux and Vice-Versa, you can expect Linux Journal to pick up where ELJ left off, and continue pushing linux on embedded platforms. Picking Linux as your embedded OS means you don't have to compromise in functionality, tools or community support, which means Linux on embedded will always be your best choice. If you are doing any embedded development at all, read linux journal and rejoice! as the pain of developing on proprietary embedded OSes has passed."
You don't need to be Kreskin to see that Embedded Linux is not dying.
Hell, just about all the C/C++ magazines went out of business as well. It basically means that readers are eschewing print magazines for online magazines.
Although I'd be quite upset if DDJ went out of business. It makes some of the best toilet reading material, not to mention the ads that are great for wiping in a pinch.
I have been pwned because my
How about TiVo. TiVo is a great example of a "black box" application for Linux. They release their kernel changes. Their application(s) stay proprietary. TiVo gets to use Linux. The Linux community gets the changes/bug fixes. The world gets a cool innovative product.
The licencing fees are a big selling point. You have a $400 (retail) product. It can't cost you more than $150 to build (in large quantities). A $10 per unit WinCE or VxWorks licence (plus development costs) is a considerable amount to spend on a product at that price point.
Practically every one of those "internet DSL/cable modem router gateway" boxes is running some version of BSD. They wouldn't be able to sell those things for $100 if they had to pay $10 per box for VxWorks or WinCE. And BSD doesn't force you to give out the source code to your changes like the GPL does, so it's an even easier sell.
Developers also love Linux since all the operating system interfaces are the same whether you're running on a dual-1GHz desktop workstation with 512MB of ram or a 70 MHz embedded processor with 8MB ram, some boot rom and no disk. The point is that you can develop all your applications on a desktop machine. Then with a minimum amount of work (ideally), you can cross-compile them and get them running on another device.
Why am I bothering to type all of this?
My other first post is car post.
How? Well, like it or not, Embeded Linux is kind of a specific market...
Think about who their major customers would be...Embeded Systems developers. And that's the problem, if it's anything worthwhile, it won't be of any help for your specific project. And if you're doing development, you're more likely to find more helpful information online or in a good book.
Oh, yes...they can do a cute writeup on the Tivo or Netpliance hack, but once it's all said an done, it's a niche that doesn't really need its own publication.
One group that this happened with is the Amiga community. At one point in time, there were Amiga Video, Amiga 3D, Amiga Sound, Amiga Power User, Amiga Games, and General Amiga mags.
At some point someone in all of the smaller (niche) magazines decided to merge their content with the much larger, higher circulation General Amiga mags. What you got in the end was a little bit of everything and what tended to be the best of the best...
So, maybe this will just make all of the Linux mags converge into a much better publication that all users can find useful all of the time, instead of a few users finding it useful some of the time.
Wind River chairman of the board and co-founder Jerry Fiddler told EE Times that the company no longer considers Linux to be a strong presence in the embedded market. "Linux is a phantasm," he said. "Software isn't free, and companies are beginning to realize that."
If anyone knows the embedded arena, it's Wind River.
Yeah, but if anyone has a vested interest in casting doubt upon embedded Linux, it's also Wind River...
Note, I'm not saying they're intentionally spreading FUD, just to take what they say with a grain of salt -- they're hardly an impartial observer!
[for anyone who doesn't know, W.R. is one of the biggest (the biggest?) vendors of proprietary embedded OSs]
We live, as we dream -- alone....
The only thing you need release is the kernel changes.
This is a GPL fallacy. You don't have to "release" anything. You simply have to supply the code to (or more accurately make it available to) anyone you distribute the application to.
For a consumer device that is obviously as nearly identical to "releasing" as it is possible to get, but it does not mean that for smaller scale more specialised operations of the sort you might encounter in some areas of embedded development.
I think Stallman would expect you to release the code to anyone who asked - after all he is supposed to have become obsessed by software freedom because of an incident where someone woiuldn't let him have some code they were using (as opposed to distributing) - but that isn't what the GPL mandates you to do.
And quite right too - otherwise it would be a code snoopers' charter.