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Motorola's Metrowerks Acquires Lineo

Posted by timothy on from the can't-you-build-some-linux-watches-already dept.

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."

5 of 93 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Here's another viewpoint / more information by ekrout · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Bruce,

    With all due respect, your comment seems like a simple rehashing of the old GNU/Linux vs. Linux war.

    Whenever Open Source / Free Software is involved in a project, we as a community know that underneath lie many great tools made by the GNU folks and many other programmers across the world. But since that's understood, we don't worry about it.

    But you're right about the use of "powers"; I admit that many lay-folks would find it misleading were they to know the real truth.

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    If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
  2. Re:Here's another viewpoint / more information by pyman · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Linux holds a very small portion of the handheld market.

    This is because hardware is the driving cost of PDAs. MS and Palm both license there Handheld OSs for between $8-$10, so the cost of the operating system has little effect on the cost of the unit.

    Palm have not invested enough in the latest version of their OS, so it is only a matter of time before WinCE surpasses Palm in Market share, as it already surpasses them in OS features.

    Because of this, I think it is going to be very hard for Linux to beat Palm and MS in the handheld market. We have to come up with a much better product, with more features, as beating the competion on price does not count for much...

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    a ^= b; b ^= a; a ^= b;
  3. Re:holy crap I cant believe it... by binaryDigit · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It just boggles the mind that they sold out

    How is running out of money "selling out", except in the strictist sense of the word? They did/do have some cool stuff (we use some of their hardware development kits here at work), but if they are not selling enough to stay afloat, then you do what you have to do to keep some semblence of the company going. What would you have them do, just go belly up?

  4. Re:Does that mean no more codewarrior? by God!+Awful+2 · · Score: 4, Insightful


    Oh PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!!!
    Codewarrior is an overpriced copy of the GNU toolchain with an ide...
    Well sure it is... but isn't that the business model that /. has been asking us to follow for the last couple of years? After all, isn't RedHat just an overpriced copy of GNU/Linux/Gnome with package management?

    -a

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  5. Who cares? by phr2 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Why does anyone think these semi-proprietary embedded Linuxes are such a good thing? I have a Zaurus with Lineo on it and as far as I can tell, there's no useful source code available. One of the big attractions of Linux, the ability to modify your system without having to sign NDA's or buy licenses, has been lost. I don't claim they're violating the letter of the GPL, but they're holding back important stuff.

    The alternative, OpenZaurus, is free but basically had to be done from scratch, from what I've heard, including some hardware reverse-engineering. I haven't gotten around to installing it on my Zaurus and I gather it still has some shortcomings. I hope Sharp will switch to OpenZaurus, release any new source code, and I don't care if Lineo goes down the tubes.

    Proprietary Linuxes are just Windows with a penguin mascot. Let them rot.