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TRON: The Unknown Open-Source?
jordandeamattson writes "Over on CNN there is a very interesting article about Tron, an open-source real-time operating system from Japan first developed and distributed in the early 1980s. The claim is that it is more widely distributed than Windows (in some 3 billion devices world-wide), that the developer (Ken Sakamura, a University professor) would be worth mucho if he had just charged for it, and that Microsoft/U.S. goverment used trade rules (Super 301) to block it adoption by schools in Japan. Check it out for an interesting read and a 'what might have been ...'" (Here's a previous mention of Tron from March about MontaVista's work to combine it with Linux.)
But Tron was developed in the 80's. MS and the US Government blocked it in 1989, when MS didn't have an embedded platform. ... United States threatened to designate TRON as an unfair trade barrier under its Super 301 trade law when it learned of plans by the Japanese government to use the software for computers in schools.
Did Bill have that much clout even then?
Fascinating, especially the last line of the article where the Prof. notes that he runs this OS on his computer at home (and doesn't do Windows).
It'd be interesting to d/l this and compare it to QNX.
Unfortunately, the ftp.tron.org site wants a username and password (and anonymous / myemailname@domain.com doesn't work)
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
I'd like to see this guy's TRON pc. I wonder what software he's able to run on it.
"It's not good to charge people for using something which is like a social infrastructure. It also inhibits the development of the computer industry. The very basic infrastructure should be free," he said.
Good idea. I want my free phone, my free internet, and my free electricity as well.
Seriously though, it seems that he's not making a distinction between "free as in speech" and "free as in beer"...
The ENIAC Demo Competition
What programming language is TRON implemented in? Inquiring programmers want to know...
You know you want to.
Because he doesn't want to be the face of anything. If you tried to make him that then you'd make his life miserable -- he appears to be happy with where he is and what he does. Pushing fame onto him would upset that.
RMS is what we get because he wants the job. I don't particularly care for a lot of his statements, but he's a zealot because he wants to be one.
Frankly, Linus sounds a lot more like Mr Sakamura than anything else... he is outspoken, but he also doesn't give a damn about the politics or other crap. He just wants to get his job done. Which is why you have disagreements over things like BitKeeper. RMS has a gold standard to uphold, Linus has a job to get done. Linus has become something of a poster boy, but by his own statement he doesn't want to be one. Some of his actions would indicate otherwise, but that doesn't surprise me. Being recognized for what you do is usually an endorphin rush. Time will tell whether or not Linus wants the spotlight.
I whole heartedly agree with you on Mr. Sakamura though. His statements about infrastructure are dead on, as is his statement regarding Mr. Gates.
I've been following Mr. Sakamura for years, and I agree: his is the soft-spoken, intelligent view which is missing from the OSS PR front. I wouldn't say its missing from OSS at all - in fact, clearly not - but the PR front in Linux-land is definitely dominated by arrogant pricks.
I'm one of them. I've been a Linux user since Linux announced it on minix, and I've put Linux to use in countless businesses and organizations I have consulted for, through the 90's and still yet into the 21st Century.
I've used a similar argument to Mr. Sakamura's - that Microsoft is free to do what they want, even if it is socially destructive - and it works.
So, the answer to your question of "why can't we..." is "we are". And should.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
You can't compare the two, but you can compare the result.
Microsoft wants PC technology in everything, and this is clear with their Embedded PC ("flavour of the month name") OS'es, TabletPC's, MS' "home of the future", Pocket Computing rubbish.
TRON was supposed to go the other way around: embedded computers in everything, talking to each other using common languages/protocols/API's from the beginning, based on open specifications.
Actually, the reason TRON failed was because Gates and his American computer technology cronies have been working against it for years.
It was Gates who screwed MSX - and MSX was supposed to be a good test of the TRON technology system - it was Gates and the US Defense industry who has kept the American embedded markets from using TRON systems in the 80's and 90's, and it is Gates who now tries to get a Microsoft operating system to do what TRON has been doing for years: run in every device imaginable, communicate freely with all other devices.
TRON would have been here, properly, as E-TRON: the worlds largest computing system, by 1995/96.
Unfortunately, it has been a looong battle for the TRON guys.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
"The reason why it was not used for personal computers was not a technical one, it was a political one."
Also
But the dream was shattered in 1989 when the United States threatened to designate TRON as an unfair trade barrier under its Super 301 trade law when it learned of plans by the Japanese government to use the software for computers in schools.
Sakamura said he was puzzled by the initial U.S. move and disappointed at the reaction of Japanese firms.
So, as an engineer he was disappointed and puzzled as to why his technically better, and free, OS was treated with so much hostility by the Americans. From MS, up to the US government risking a trade dispute in order to block it. And the Japanese firms went where the money was and followed MS.
Perhaps his comment on Gates is instead a gentle dig at the American religion of capitalism?
TRON was a kick ass project. And everything we've wanted to do with TRON, we can now do with Linux.
:)
Linux was a kick ass project. And everything we've wanted to do with Linux, we can now do with some flavor of Windows. There is no reason that what people do with Linux can't be done on Windows CE or desktop Windoze. Do we simply toss out Linux as an option because we could do the same on Windows? Do we simply toss out TRON as an option because we could do the same with Linux?
Yes, in everwhere but Japan, we'll probably never touch TRON and its family. It's all in Japanese, built by Japanese engineers for Japanese people. Which isn't to day localization to English and other languages can't be done, but with all the competition, I can't see Ken-san thinking an English version of BTRON is the most important thing for the TRON world right now. Which is a shame- BTRON is a pretty sweet system, MicroScript beating the pants off of shell scripting any day.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
I wonder how TRON (The Real-time Operation Nucleus)
is related to the real time operating system you offered at
http://www.atinucleus.com/
Is the word "Nucleus" related anyway? There are a few faint references to TRON on the Nucleus-site
I'm not sure of how much dominance Microsoft had in 1984!! These were the days of the Commodore 64 and Apple ][. The IBM compatible wasn't a market leader at the time
You have your history slightly messed up.
Yes, MS was a market dominator at the time. Not as much as it is now, but it certainly had the burgeoning PC market tied up. IBM was the market leader at the time, and was totally dominant. There were compatibles out by this time (Compaq debuted in 1982), but this was the heyday of "IBM compatible" -- meaning that it ran MS-DOS and could run intensive applications like VisiCalc and MS Flight Simulator. If you wanted to make a PC compatible you only had one OS to chose from -- MS-DOS. IBM used PC-DOS, which was a licensed derivative of MS-DOS. DR-DOS didn't appear until 1988.
1984 was not the days of the C64 and Apple ][. This was the year that Apple introduced the Macintosh, with the "1984" commercial during the Superbowl. The C64 and AppleII were well on their way to their deathbeds. The mid 80s were the rise of the Mac and Amiga, and the overwhelming adoption of the PC.
That said, I agree that it's unlikely that MS blocked the adoption of TRON. I would like to know what forces were behind that, but I'm willing to bet the company in question was IBM, not MS.
Sorry, but no. There are *thousands* of reasons we can't do with Windows what we can do with Linux.
Those thousands of reasons are called "lines of code". The code for Microsoft Windows will never be available - and for this reason alone, we can never do with Windows what we can do with TRON. Or Linux.
I'm a hardware manufacturer.
I want to run a decent operating system on hardware CPU xxx_yyy. CPU xxx_yyy is pretty important to me: as a hardware manufacturer, for hardware manufacturer reasons.
I can: a) see if Microsoft Windows CE supports it, and if not either give up and use the CPU they want me to use or pay thousands for them to support my xxx_yyy CPU, or b) port Linux to it myself freely in a couple of days.
No comparison. We can not do with Windows today what we have been able to do with TRON for 20 years.
And, FYI, you've got TRON running in your home, somewhere, if you're an average American consumer with credit cards that you use. Every American uses TRON, somehow, at least 2 or 3 times a day.
Without even knowing it.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Can anyone point me to the actual license of this code? (Japanese or English) How about the source code? There seems to be plenty of binaries and specifications available for download.. but source?
Thanks
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
True enough.
... and the OS allready mature when the hardware finally is available.
Tron was(and is) a fantastic architecture. It was designed in a union of operation system, system service APIs and hardware architecture.
From the start up the planned for a 32 bit system(at that time common micro processores where 6502 and 8088 and Z80), so the first kernals and services where emulating the 32 bit architecture while the final 32 bit processors run that same kernal native.
The question MITI was asking the japanese industry was: what and where do you want to compute in the future? And then they descided HOW to compute in the future. And then they crafted an OS which found parallel architectures in Transputers and in modern distributed architectures.
Basicly they used the opposite approach others use: instead of emulating old systems with actual hardware and limit the actual hardware by that, they emulate future systems.
Instread of putting money into hardware, albeit the hardware was early planned, they put money into the intellectual challange how to get super expensive features(in terms of MIPS) of a super cool OS done ellegantly in cheap hardware. With the goal of having superiour hardware 20 years later
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Why is this behaviour "awefully weird"? The U.S. routinely engages in such practices. Perhaps these examples will futher enlighten you: (1) Currently the U.S. subsidizes its farmers to the tune of $8 billion over the next 5 years. In addition the U.S. is negotiating trade agreements with third world countries. These countries are (a)in these agreements (if agreement is reached) forbidden to subsidize their farmers, (b) forbidden to protect their farmers from lower priced U.S. imports which will cripple the local farming industry. In fact, if such a country wants to get any financial support from the world bank etc... they are obliged to follow such economic policies which place them at a disadvantage as compared to the first world. Talk about damned whatever you do. (2)(Happily as of a news report this morning this situation may be improving but....) Up until today, the U.S. government has used threats of economic reprisals in the form of trade tarrifs and/or sanctions etc... to stop poor African countries from buying generic alternatives to expensive anti-retroviral drugs for combatting Aids. Now, on the one hand, you could argue that intellectual property of the big pharmaceutical companies is being protected. On the other hand, the lives of millions of poeple have been held to ransom so as to protect the profits of American and British drug companies. The drug companies' stance becomes laughable when you consider that no poor country can afford the drugs anyway, so almost none are being bought.
Amiga booted a 32 bit multitasking operating system from a floppy back in 1985. So I would have to agree with you.
Coding Blog
...and no one that I know is even considering using Linux for an embedded system, besides PDAs.
... you don't have to be a MS proponent or even a user to attempt to speak the voice of reason.
... Given that you're unable to see the most obvious benefits of Linux over Windows CE for the embedded hardware developer, I'd say I still question the 'reasoning' behind your actual movites for contributing to this thread.
Well, I don't know if you work in the embedded systems industry, but I do, and I know plenty of people who are using Linux, and about 2 companies who have considered CE and decided, on the basis of the licensing and technology issues, that it is crap.
Do you really think that for any given CPU, all of the sdk/eval boards are the same, save a couple of options? (ethernet or not, one or two serial ports, one-line LCD or a TFT, etc)
Doesn't matter if they are, or if they are not - the point is its far easier to port Linux to a foreign board architecture than it is to port Windows. For one, the costs are nothing compared to CE, and for two, embedded Linux has so much momentum at this moment, that it really is easy to get Linux running on most new board architectures. All it takes is a little google activity, the hardware ref manuals for your board, and a half decent Internet connection, and you've got the tools you need to get porting!
Well, no, you don't have to be a MS proponent or user, but in your case I'm not so sure you should be jumping on the 'listen to me, mine is the voice of reason' soapbox in this thread
The fact is, in 2 minutes flat and for very little cost whatsoever I can be porting the Linux kernel to my new hardware platform. This can not be said about the Windows CE kernel. Nor can it be said of the CE kernel that it is suitable for the needs of TRON.
For a hardware vendor to not have to deal with *any* licensing issues on the OS line item means a lot. That it can be done with an OS as advanced as Linux is - and in many ways, Linux is a far more advanced operating system than Windows - is just icing on the cake. A cake which is free of manipulative seasoning, alas...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
I'm quite a bit younger than you, a wee one. Back in 1991, I wasn't running Linux- but then again, I didn't have a regular computer. I was lucky enough to have recieved a Tandy/Radio Shack PC-3 handheld computer the year before, along with thermal printer docking station and cassette tape drive. My uncle got it for free, and gave it to me no less. A whop[omg 1.4 K of RAM. As a new programmer, 10 years old, I never seemed to notice havin so little. :)
/usr /root /usr2, etc) as well as DOS and a bunch of programming languages for it.
:)
I later found out that brand new, these things were very resonably priced- makes you wonder why more nerds didn't have them! The PC-3 - sans docking station/thermal printer or the cassette drive- was only $99. Back in 1983, that was dirt cheap for a fully programmable BASIC computer, with a QWERTY keyboard, some expansion option, and a 20-some character display.
My first experience with a "real" computer was with a second-hand XT that another uncle gave me in 1992. Dual floppies, ooohhhh yeah. Along with it, he gave me a bunch of disks, including the current version of Minix (on a 6-7 disks labeled
In the end, I stuck with DOS over Minix though. I loved to use Minix- just playing around with it, exploring what binaries were on the disks I had for it. But then again, only MS-DOS had Turbo Prolog- and no matter how much more I studied C, I could do so much more in a few lines of Prolog than I could with C. Heck, I never even did any logic programming, just regular procedural-type stuff, although you had to phrase it in terms of Prolog...
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad