Slashdot Mirror
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.)
Tron is an OS? I thought Tron was a simple program, written only to destroy the MCP.
--- I'm going to get a score of -1 for this post because the mods are fuckers.
TRON is an "embedded" operating system running inside microprocessors, which control electronic devices ranging from mobile phones to fax machines and even kitchen appliances.
Micro$oft Windows doesn't control electronic devices ranging from mobile phones to fax machines and even kitchen appliances, as far as I know, right??? (I hope it doesn't anyways)
How can you compare the two?
Sure, there's google, but there seems to be the TRON OS home page, in english.
Besides, what devices run than OS ? anyone know ?
This is a pretty unfounded claim. The truth is that this is a relatively simple system we are talking baout here. If Sakamura had been charging for TRON it seems relatively likely that either hundreds of competitors would have sprung up to grab a slice of the pie or that someone else would simply have released a similar open source product. In either case, although Sakamura would probably have made some money, assuming $43 billion is just silly.
lysergically yours
"Had Sakamura decided to charge even one cent to each user of TRON, he would easily be a dollar billionaire by now, possibly even rivalling Gates, reputed to be the world's richest man with a fortune estimated at $43 billion by Forbes magazine."
/. I'd be rich! No one can say what would have happened in terms of adoption if there was a financial barrier.
This assumes that he could charge one penny, or one dollar, or 100 yen, or whatever. This kind of speculation is vacuous. It is like saying, If I had a nickel for every time I read
How to Download YouTube Videos
In the movie TRON, TRON was a program designed to crack security and free the computer from an overpowering OS that became self-aware and was plotting to take over everything. In the end TRON was victorious.
It's not hard to draw obvious parallels...
Hearing that M$ went out of the way to block TRON from being used on this side of the pond brought back found memories of said movie. Give that program one of those cool disks from the movie and see what happens...
Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES!
It is more likely that the trade barrier being described would be for sale of hardware rather than for software. I can't see the US Govt getting up in a lather about the MSDOS license fee.
The other issue the story ignores is that there would not be as many copies of the O/S if there was a charge of a cent a copy.
The most widely used O/S is embedded on some smartcard or other...
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Here, and here.
(All links courtesy of google).
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Yes. It's a way of measuring wealth relatively, so if you claim to be a billionaire with 100 billion foodollars in the bank, if there are are 100 million foodollars to 1 USD, then you would have $1000, whereas a dollar billionaire has, well, a billion USD, so you can compare who is richer in real terms.
First revealed in 1984, PR0N, which can be modified for use on personal computers, was hailed in Japan as a homemade software which could break the dominance of Playboy and Hustler and free Japanese masturbators from the burden of paying for the basic software.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Is that instead of just deleting old programs, you can throw frisbees at them and they'll disappear. For once, you'll be able to have as much fun deleting files as Strong Bad[homestarrunner.com].
It wasn't me, it was the one-armed
Yes we may be a heartless, monopolistic company
Tell me about it.
but we're not that other heartless monopolistic company who doesn't like open source.
Microsoft uses open-source software in its Services For UNIX product. Many of its userland network programs (ping, ftp, etc) are based on those from BSD. But then again, Microsoft put a provision into the license for its C library banning linking with copylefted code, even where the copylefted code's license would otherwise allow it (e.g. "operating system" exception in the GNU GPL), so I guess you're right.
We at Disney love open source.
Then why hasn't Disney released Mickey Mouse as open source? Nine out of ten copyright scholars agree that it's time for the company to move on to a new cash cow.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I'd like to see this guy's TRON pc. I wonder what software he's able to run on it.
Fromt the article:
"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.
"But Mr Gates is free to do whatever he wants, as we live in a world of capitalism."
A man who's got it right.
Why can't we (in the western world) get this type of soft-spoken wisdom to be the face of OSS, and not the curmudgeonly off-putting geekazoidness of RMS?
"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
Since no one RTFA (but me :) here's 2 really good quotes:
"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.
Should? I don't know. But it certainly would be a great help to the advancement of the software industry.
Asked about the operating system inside his own computer, Sakamura smiles broadly. "TRON, of course. I don't use Windows."
That's obligatory, but still amusing.
Developers: We can use your help.
If TRON is more deployed than *BSD, then TRON has less of a chance of dying.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I can get a 14 foot spoiler and Type R stickers for my operating system!
So...let me get this straight: The USA blocked it's [ TRON ] adoption in JAPANESE SCHOOLS, because it was unfair trade practice?
Am I missing something?
And while I'm at it: Bussinesses don't innovate. They sell. Scientists innovate, and are hampered and held back by bussinessmen. That is how it has always worked, and how it always will work. When we finally get our collective heads out of our asses, maybe we can actually start working on our future.
In actual fact, TRON is one of the standards of the embedded world and most students should hear about it in any embedded/microprocessor course they do.
There are various areas in the TRON project. BTRON would be the desktop-OS oriented part, and that's where the Chokanji OS comes from, still the best environment for DTP in Japanese.
I can remember when TRON was going to save us all from Unicode with its TRON Multilingual Environment. It didn't work out but it did result in quite a nice platform for Mojikyo.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
http://tronweb.super-nova.co.jp/btronproducts.html
enjoy...
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
TROFF. -)
What programming language is TRON implemented in? Inquiring programmers want to know...
You know you want to.
... but underestimating the effect which TRON has had on the industry is also silly. TRON was designed to run *everywhere* - circa 70's era technology - and has.
The JAVA guys found big inspiration in TRON as a project, and in fact there is reason to believe that Sun held the TRON project up as an example of 'embedded processing' done right in the early days of the JAVA project.
To underestimate how much this would've been worth, had it not been for a little slack licensing, is to discount the story here.
Projects like this ARE worth lots, and lots, and lots of money.
And while TRON may not be the mega-system it was supposed to be (actually, it was supposed to be the worlds biggest computing system), all of this is still feasible with Linux.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Ummmmm... WTF?
The article made no mention that Microsoft did anything whatsoever to block TRON using trade rules or anything else for that matter. There are only three mentions of Microsoft in the article.
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 -- let alone Microsoft. Microsoft didn't have the money nor the clout to block anything.
The
If this statement is true then the implications are that MS really is out to control digital information and communications world wide. If the US state department has a hand in this kind of bull, then things are not rosy for the future linux and open source. Kind of makes you wonder which part of the world is actually "The Free World".
If this is true ignoring open source might make Orwells 1984 look like a rainstorm at a church picnic.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
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
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.
I think RMS would be happy... we could all do the GNU/TRON dance.
Maybe someone should forward this story to Darl, get him time to get his lawsuit ready.
that the developer (Ken Sakamura, a University professor) would be worth mucho if he had just charged for it
Think about it, if he had only charged a billion dollars per copy, at 3 billion units sold, he'd have more money than all the countries of the world put together! Woah, what if he charged a TRILLION dollars per copy. He could buy the solar system!
Yeah, that's not how it works.. Probably the reason why it IS so wide spead is because it was free...
You can download come code off this Japanese page. Just click the first link in the right column.
TOPPERS is a GPL implementation of the ITRON (Industrial TRON) specifiction for embedded computers. You can find more information about it in this paper.
Of course it's scary. Why do you think it's abbreviated as WinCE?
I like this line, and IMHO it illustrates much of what is wrong with the USA, today.
...but that's not the end of the story...
Don't get me wrong, I don't advocate any sort of move to Communism or Socialism, or anything like that.
But Capitalism is good as a motivator. Greed is a powerful motivator. But it doesn't belong in the same basket as 'air', 'water', 'food', and such. Maybe in the short term, it can sit in the same basket as 'sex'.
But in the USA, it appears that we've turned Capitalism (perhaps more precisely, greed) into a religion. IMHO this particular shuffling of priorities causes an unstable situation.
Simple demonstration:
Want to increase profits?
Move jobs overseas, paying 'local' wages.
Profit!!!
Everybody does it, too many jobs move overseas.
Nobody at home can afford your prices, because they're unemployed.
Overseas they can't afford your prices, because you never paid them enough.
Is the profit sustainable, or have you simply ransacked the commons? (one-time)
Again, not proposing Communism, but to say that Capitalism can exist without a Commons is myopic.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
It seems that there is already a project underway to integrate Tron with Linux. . .
Tron + Linux = T-Linux.
"The T-Engine Forum and MontaVista Software announced that they are collaborating to combine TRON ("The Real-time Operating system Nucleus") -- the long-dominant Japanese embedded operating system -- with embedded Linux, in an effort to create a standardized software architecture for embedded devices that takes advantage of open source software and the benefits of Linux, while retaining a degree of compatibility with TRON."
what's wrong with communism...it's only failed because of pressure from capitalist countries...it might have worked quite well without the tension caused by the juxtaposition of two competing ideologies...it's underlying principles are quite sound
What if US workers agreed to work for the same or lower rates as overseas workers? Cost is the employer's motivator. Just because you may live in the US does not mean you are guarenteed a higher quality of life than other people on this planet.
The problem is differences in cost of living. The dollar goes a lot further in India than it does in even the cheapest parts of the US.
For $X/a month, a worker in India would probably have a *higher* standard of living than a US worker being paid the same amount.
It isn't that US workers are demanding high pay to live a life of luxury; it's that the cost of living here requires them to. But I guess it's US workers' fault that they aren't willing to relocate their families to a foreign country to continue working.
Hurrah!
Let's hear it for the hardline moderates.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.