Slashdot Mirror
Wind River CEO Unexpectedly Resigns
The Finn writes "According to Electronics Weekly Wind River CEO Tom St. Dennis resigned today and left Wind River. For those who forgot, Wind River assumed stewardship of FreeBSD as part of the BSDi acquisition in May 2001, and subsequently Cut it loose in January 2002, and it still sells BSD /OS 5.0. I'll avoid the speculation of BSD dying, but Wind River may not be looking so good."
Quite sad to see Wind River in trouble ("The companyâ(TM)s revenue declined 20 percent last quarter" - Electronic News) as it decreases FreeBSD deployement among enterprises.
I don't know much about other firms using BSD (like Wasabi Systems) however it seems it's more difficult for them to sell BSD systems compared with Linux distributors.
Quite contradictoraly, BSD license is more "liberal" than Linux from the enterprise point of view which can use the code with minimal restrictions (FreeBSD License) Wind River and Wasabi Systems gives a generous access to their proprietary source to some bsd developpers)
As Linux gains momentum, I hope IT managers will see those nice BSD lurking around, using them, and helping maintaining them (like hiring developpers to work on these systems).
I was forcefull migrated off BSD/OS to FreeBSD a week ago. Perhaps things at Windriver aren't so great and the word is out?
So it's "news for nerds, stuff that matters" when the Wind River CEO resigns unexpectedly (I use FreeBSD and I don't have any idea who they are), but it's not "news for nerds, stuff that matters" when VA Linux CEO Larry Augustin resigned unexpectedly?
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
WindRiver never, ever had any involvment with the FreeBSD project. What they bought was the FreeBSD merchanidise business that originally had been started by Walnut Creek and was subsequently owned by BSDi. WindRiver subsquently sold the FreeBSD merchanidise part of the aquisition to FreeBSD Mall who are still selling FreeBSD merchandise. What happens to WindRiver is of no relevance to FreeBSD in the slightest, and they had nothing to do with the project itself at any time, they just bought out one of the many FreeBSD merchandise comapanies that exist.
When I worked at Applied Materials many years back, he ran the division I was working in. Although I never directly interacted with him, I found his management style well balanced and his speeches inspiring. Looking back, I would have no qualms about working under him again.
Sorry, but I have the misfortune of using Wind Rivers' VxWorks real time OS. I've have very little luck getting support from them (usually I have figured out the problem myself long before they can respond). Their hardware support is poor, their disk I/O layer is abysmal, their compilers out of date, and they are way too expensive for what you get. They don't have USB drivers (unless you want to be a printer, not a controller), they don't have SMB drivers, they killed their embedded X server (guess what I needed!), their board support packages don't (imaging a BSP for a Strongarm that does not even enable the cache!)
If I had it all to do over again, I would have used an embedded Linux rather than VxWorks. Granted, I work on some pretty large and complex systems that are just too much for VxWorks.
If you are doing a smaller system, use something like eCOS or RTXC. If you are doing a larger system or a system that must be networked, use QNX , BSD or Linux.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Someone needs to post about how Tom St. Dennis only has 40,000 red blood cells, down from 100,000 last year. Someone? Help?
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
WindRiver is the MS of the embedded world. They make there money selling there OS to people trying to make whatever boxes.
They are arrogant, hard to deal, support is awful and they number enbedded system OS.
I have dealt with them and don't them.
Of course their tornado app does make it easier to develop on.
The OS in 1991 was pretty decent. Things were up-to-date, and it was the best thing VME had going for it. (VME is a great standard. Pity about the companies implementing it.)
Last year, though... That was another matter. VxWorks was unreliable and unstable. (I don't care what my boss at the time claimed - I was needing to reboot the VME crate repeatedly, and that's not acceptable. That's worse than my coding!)
IMHO, VxWorks has had a good run. It's been around a long time, it has had some wonderful moments, but somewhere along the line it took a wrong turn. It's time Wind River accepted this.
Wind River also does need to cash in a reality check or two, when it comes to pricing and support. We are NOT living in the boom times, we are NOT living in the early 1990's, when competition simply didn't exist and companies could charge what they liked and get away with it.
Even Microsoft is beginning to feel the pinch, and that's impressive, given that it has enough spare cash to function at 100% capacity for the next three to four years without selling a single thing. That's just the loose change!
*BSD isn't dying, it isn't even remotely close to it. Although the kernel does need some serious work, as technology is moving ahead faster than the coders.
That's true for Linux, too. Progress in the field is outpacing the kernel coders by miles. That's not good, because it means certain hostile companies can out-flank these efforts, by simply skipping a generation or two of technology and going to the latest. We've seen that more than once.
What's dying is the rate of development, as a function of the rate of technological change. That's not unusual when projects get very large. The larger a project, the more effort it takes to add even small components. Too much interaction to check for and debug.
Wind River will likely vanish. By pricing itself out of the market, creating hostile public opinion, and by not building up the programming staff required to keep the momentum going, it will kill itself.
FreeBSD'll move elsewhere, bruised but otherwise unharmed. It'll be set back a little, though, as it'll take time for the politics to work out.
The underlying issues, though, are universal to all software writers:
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
They still sell BSD/OS, a commercial version of FreeBSD, which they got from BSDi.
It is probrably 1% of their business, so - as you said - troubles at Wind River, if any, do not reflect on FreeBSD.
The BSD Family Tree
Well, now you can see what you get the other 25% of the time from Slashdot. 75% are just reposts of daemonnews.org or various bsd forums.
-Linux will soon be owned by either IBM or SCO...
-Windows was never alive
-BSD is dying...
guess we have to go back to AmigaOS again
BSDI had several full-time FreeBSD developers on their payroll when WindRiver acquired them.
When you cut and paste an old Mac flame, try to remember to change details like the model (8600/300) if you really want to wind people up. :-D
--Jon
Yet another "BSD is dying" FUD at /.
Confusing WindRiver with the FreeBSD Project is a silly mistake.
--- Signature? You must be kidding!
Now electronic news is reporting that St. Dennis was ousted by the board.
NetBSD: the cathedral vs the bizzare.
Quote ..."I'll avoid the speculation of BSD dying, but Wind River may not be looking so good."
;)
I see. So *BSD is dying is now longer just a complete myth now but has moved to the status of speculation.
Cool. Trolling seems to work
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle can save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
Not entirely off-topic, I admit, but Wind River has offered a desktop-version of their GUI toolkit called "Zinc" for free use (with certain ristrictions). So I'm curious: has anybody here had any experience with Zinc? Is it any good?
t op /index.html
http://www.windriver.com/products/zinc_for_desk
"Oooh, does that mean we get to kick some puffy white mad zionist butt?"
Is that where that behemoth ended up? At windriver?
I used Zinc in the early 90's to do some very light-weight cross platform toys, but that was about it -- it was a jack of all trades, master of none when it came down to it -- like most of the class of tools under the umbrella of CASE
In fact today, using AWT in Java reminds me of that experience
Old age and treachery almost always overcome youth and skill.
It is official; Netcraft now confirms: *BSD is growing
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Windows community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has risen yet again, now up to more than 30 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has gained more market share , this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is sending other OSes into complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by topping the charts in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Daemon to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a long and prosperous future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Windows Server because *BSD is growing. Things are looking very good for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to gain market share. Red ink flows from Redmond like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most loved of them all, having gained 93% more core developers. The sudden and pleasant release of the long developed 5.0 only serves to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is growing.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 70000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 70000/5 = 14000 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 7000 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (70000+14000+7000)*4 = 364000 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the release of OSX, cool new technologies and so on, FreeBSD is expanding into more desktops than ever. FreeBSD has become more than the sum of its parts.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily gained in market share. *BSD is very powerful and its long term survival prospects are very bright. If Windows is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to improve. The progress achieved is nothing short of a miracle. For all practical purposes, *BSD is alive and kicking.
Fact: *BSD will kick your ass
Just pissing off the trolls. Move along.
The Finn,
You couldn't resist the "BSD is dying" troll inside yourself, could you?
Kindly never post on a msg board again.
BSD is stronger than every, please get this through your damn head.
OpenBSD
FreeBSD
NetBSD
Mac OS X - more UNIX desktops than Linux will ever be on.
All actively being developed, strong community, where most new technology is developed, Linux community just bolts it onto their distros.
So what if some company that sells FreeBSD CD's CEO quit, it means nothing to any of the develoment of BSD.
You have no say.
We use vxworks here and from our perspective it has a number of problems.
Firstly they have been trying to push a subscription scheme from there old licensing model. For existing projects this works out as very expensive(10,000 per seat per year).
Support can be poor and updates unreliable. We recently had some poor drivers which took ages to debug and a poor network stack. Until recently source code was a very expensive optional extra, so leaving you very stuck waiting for vxworks to get there act together. And remember we are paying for all this in our support contract.
Also on the horizon is embedded linux. The pricing structure is such that if go with vxWorks for low end products any profit margin is taking by license costs, therefore RT linux has been killing them in this area.
On the plus side, if you have a non standard board or processor getting a working OS on it is a breeze with vxWorks.
But I think embedded linux is starting to make there high costs look increasingly out of phase with the real world. I can see a lot of changes occurring in the next 6 months.
Choose your allies carefully, it is highly unlikely you will be held accountable for the actions of your enemies
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it could only be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
i'm so happy to see that someone's archived this!
But what do I know. I'm just looking for anonymous gay sex.
The record is clear on one thing: no operating system has ever come back from the grave. Efforts to resuscitate *BSD are one step away from spiritualists wishing to communicate with the dead. As the situation grows more desperate for the adherents of this doomed OS, the sorrow takes hold. An unremitting gloom hangs like a death shroud over a once hopeful *BSD community. The hope is gone; a mournful nostalgia has settled in. Now is the end time for *BSD.