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.

This is bad news for open source.

[Ludwig668]

As a long time RTOS programmer, and being a contributor to the ECOS project, I think that this is a terrible blow for the open source community. Is open source (and LGPL) viable? This decision suggests not.

The best thing about open source is that you don't have to rely on an inept customer service person to figure out that they in fact have problems in their system. I've spent weeks asking a large closed source and very expensive RTOS vendor to fix some of the dumbest OS bugs (admittedly in a new JVM product they'd hardly released yet)--they still don't believe the one page test programs I send them; in fact, I've just been simply astounded at the dumb things I've been told to do. There's nothing worse than knowing that if you had the source, you'd just simply fix the problem, submit the change, and move on. And you know what's worst? The development tools for this expensive RTOS were cygnus anyway.

The eCos source code was very well written, it's confiuration understandable (and scriptable!), and all in all, a very well concieved project. I will do a CVS update now; and hang on tight to that system... it will be well worth it.

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.

Is it really bad? Remember Eazel?

[qweqwe]

It doesn't necessarily mean it's bad news. It may even be good news.

When Eazel died, Nautilus development didn't die. Instead, it expanded and resulted in a really nice, more focused and componentized part of GNOME. Why? Becuse Nautilus now grows in the direction the community wants, not in the direction that the Eazel wanted, so business model-related features/bloat and GNOME-duplicated functionality were stripped away.

If you feel strongly about eCos, set up a CVS on sourceforge or savannah.gnu.org and see if anyone on the Debian mailing list is interesting in porting Debian to eCos (like they do for HURD, FreeBSD, Linux, and Win32 (although this port is *really* basic)). Or submit an "Ask Slashdot" call for developers and see who is interested. Either way, the source gives you a lot of power to control your OS choice.

eCos CVS

[cpeterso]

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