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TRON + Linux = "T-Linux"

Posted by timothy on from the gudgilla dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The T-Engine Forum and MontaVista Software announced today that they are collaborating to combine the long-dominant Japanese embedded operating system, TRON ("The Real-time Operating system Nucleus"), with embedded Linux, in the hopes of creating a standardized software architecture for embedded devices that takes advantage of open source software and the benefits of Linux."

4 of 143 comments (clear)

  1. answer by djupedal · · Score: 2, Informative

    Silly question, perhaps...the news last month from Japan explained that the manufs. there are simply looking to be MS free. And since they've recognized that their own efforts have failed, while Linux is growing, they've bitten the bullet and moved on.

    Of course there are other reasons, but how much more of a reason should they need.

  2. Re:question by zbik · · Score: 5, Informative

    TRON is more of an OS specificication than an OS; many vendors implement the TRON API in their RTOS, and many applications (in Japan) are developed for it. This project could be cool because it would enable companies to adopt Linux while maintaining compatibility with their legacy embedded apps -- provided this does not become a proprietary MontaVista technology. The benefit of Linux is the massive amount of hardware it will run on, and the all the development tools & libraries available.


    Redhat's eCos already supports uITRON (Micro Industrial TRON, the most popular flavor) through a compatibility layer.

  3. Re:Unlikely by ewhac · · Score: 2, Informative

    I was reading about TRON in Byte Magazine in the mid-1980's. This almost certainly pre-dates anything Mentor has done, much less registered.

    Schwab

    --
    Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
  4. Not a chance by msobkow · · Score: 2, Informative

    "Nucleus" has been around for a rather long time, usually used to indicate the center or core of something (analagous to the nucleus of a cell.)

    Even more damning for any attempt by Mentor to enforce any copyright claims is the fact that terms like "nucleus" and "core" have been used in operating systems textbooks and papers since the seventies.

    TRON also only uses the word as part of an acronym, not as part of a trademark.

    The biggest issue would be (as others have pointed out) that TRON existed long before Mentor's Nucleus RTOS.

    --
    I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.