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.)

Comments

Re:Home page

[torpor]

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.