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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."
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.