Motorola's Metrowerks Acquires Lineo

An anonymous reader writes "It's official: Following weeks of speculation, Motorola's Metrowerks embedded tools subsidiary today has finally announced that they are acquiring the key assets of Embedix Inc. (a.k.a. Lineo), one of the earliest and most popular providers of embedded Linux software and tools."

Comments

Here's another viewpoint / more information

[ekrout]

I read this news earlier on C|Net. They had it embedded (sorry for the bad pun) in an article entitled "Mixed fortunes for embedded Linux".

Please note that this was deemed bad by some for embedded Linux because of the fact that Lineo had to be acquired and no longer was self-sufficient due to lack of profits from software sales.

Lineo's "Embeddix" software for portable devices powers those Zaurus handhelds that some of you are familiar with.

The good news mentioned in that article was that Toshiba just invested a hefty chunk of change into MontaVista software, another player in the embedded market.

Re:Here's another viewpoint / more information

[Bruce Perens]

Well, Lineo did a lot of work on the Zaurus, especially drivers, but the software mostly comes from the community, with the runner up being Troll Tech. Saying that embeddix "powers" the Zaurus is market-speak.

Bruce

Zaurus

[Bruce Perens]

By the way, OpenZaurus 3.0, the "free" load for the Zaurus, is really cool! I am running it on my Zaurus, with 1/2 Gig SD card and either 802.11b or Bluetooth in the CF slot. When I ssh to it there's little to tell me it's not a powerful server system. And the applications that run on the LCD are pretty good, too. I hear there's a reverse-engineered driver for the SD coming from the iPaq. That's the last component that wasn't Open Source. I will demo all of this on the geek cruise this year, and will also do a talk on international wireless connectivity with GPRS.

Bruce

Linux Watch

[Anonymous Coward]

from the can't-you-build-some-linux-watches-already dept.

Already been done:

IBM clocks in with new Linux watch Developers Warm Up to Linux Watch IBM's Linux Wristwatch IBM Research - Linux Watch

Re:Sounds suspicious ...

[mdechene]

"Customers want a full solution, up to the application level, from a single source," [Metrowerks vice president of strategic marketing John] Smolucha added. Does this sound a little like the Microsoft/Disney/AOLTW/whoever monopolistic practices to anyone else, or am I just being overly cynical and reading too much into it? How does this fit into the whole free (as in speech) aspect of the Linux developmental ideology?

When he says "Customers", he means "Embedded Systems Developers". And yes, we do want a full solution, up to the application level, from a single source. You want to buy a single dev kit, not a chip programmer from one company, a programming environment from a second, and an O/S from a third. This way you don't have to pull out your hair trying to integrate the environments before you even begin development. And no, it's not a monopolistic statement, as it doesn't preclude other companies having solutions for their own chips. Basically, MetroWerks wants to provide an entire development solution for Motorola chips, kinda like TI wants to provide the same for their chips.