Red Hat Dissolves eCos Team, Changes Embedded Strategy

Anonymous Coward writes "This article at LinuxDevices.com, which includes an Interview with Red Hat CTO Michael Tiemann, probes Red Hat's dissolution of its eCos project team and the reasoning behind Red Hat's newly adjusted embedded linux strategy. Tiemann says his company is still in the embedded business, but considers embedded to be an aspect of a broader 'platform OS' strategy."

Comments

Re:I think this is a good move for redhat

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi.

I work with embedded OS and hardware, so I can tell from your niave statments that you don't.

Size, power consumption, etc dictate components, and upgrading from 100k to 2 meg of memory just isn't possible most of the time. Since linux is a memory hog (compared to other embedded OSes), and has poor latency, it's not a viable option.

Since the minix license has changed, that's one of the most popular "free" OSes available. And it doesn't have the legal entaglements linux has.

I like linux - we use it for our web, mail, and samba servers. But we don't use it for embedded devices.

I am very disappointed.

[rice_burners_suck]

I am particularly upset about this, because my company began development on an industrial product with eCos at its core. We invested at least $50,000.00 in development. Now, management is freaking out, and we have to investigate new operating systems, and possibly re-develop some key portions of our system.

Just kidding. We didn't really do any of that. But seriously now, my company was seriously considering eCos as the operating system for our upcoming project. Personally, I would have greatly preferred eCos over the other solutions we're evaluating, particularly because I'd much rather support eCos than some proprietary solution. (And because the money spent on the proprietary solution could be spent on better analysis tools and whatnot, and because you don't normally get the sources for proprietary stuff, which is a huge problem in hard-core embedded systems, and because... ten thousand other reasons.) I was looking forward to working on eCos, as it appeared to be a very promising system. So this is pretty disappointing news.

Idiots guide to embedded computers

[Eric Seppanen]

1. "Embedded" is not a coherent market. It's an incredibly wide span from dinky 8-bit CPUs that you'd use if you were building a toaster, or maybe super-efficient CPUs for cheap cellphones, through medium-sized CPUs that run industrial machines, or maybe cheap routers or automotive engine controls, all the way up to very hefty CPUs that drive expensive routers, giant room-sized printers, or networked test equipment.

2. Yes, some embedded designs (those at the smaller end of the scale) don't use an OS or a kernel of any kind. But it's equally important to realize (as some 5-rated slashdot poster invariably doesn't) that the embedded CPU in a piece of $100,000 network equipment probably does run a hefty OS kernel, especially if it needs multitasking, networking, field debugging, or upgrading (as many pieces of $100,000 network equipment do).

3. Note that I say "OS kernel", not "OS". Most PC users tend to think of an "OS" as a giant 500MB distribution that includes everything from printer drivers to web browsers. Even heavyweight embedded systems are a lot slimmer (kernel+libraries+app, perhaps), but may still bear some resemblance to what you consider an "Operating System".

4. There's as many penny-pinching companies doing embedded designs as there are penny-pinching companies of other flavors. Some companies have big issues with the costs of VxWorks and similar products.

5. Support is really important in the embedded world, where you're always going to have to customize somebody else's code. As a corollary, survival of the company you're buying from is very important too (definitely an concern with today's crop of embedded-linux companies). Note that this and #4 are in conflict.

eCos CVS

[cpeterso]

btw, here is how to access Red Hat's eCos CVS repository: eCos v2.0 CVS source repository.