Slashdot Mirror
Wind River Announces It Likes Linux After All
onecrazyfoo writes "Wind River is going to start supporting Linux in the embedded market. Pretty big news from the largest company in the embedded tools market. What makes it even more interesting is the fact that they have been very anti-Linux and outspoken about it in the past. You can read more about their announcement at LinuxDevices.com." I'm guessing this has come about because of recent changes in the company.
They're just doing like LynuxWorks former Lynx with their Blue Cat Linux. I have a strong suspicion that WindRiver just wants to profit from some of the Linux hype, given that, apart from the price, quite frankly, their OS and tool suites are just way better than any embedded Linux suite I've ever seen/worked on/worked with.
...
It's just another company trying to jump on the Linux bandwagon. Nothing to see here folks
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
From the comments so far, I will presume most Slashdotters have no experience with WindRiver.
Exercising great restraint to avoid writing anything they would likely sue me for (such as a factual tale of my experience dealing with them for over two years), I would just like to point out that we should not, in any way, consider this "good" news.
Aside from their "quality" tools (the fixing of which I can thank for giving me a reason to learn Tcl), expect to hear about a GPL violation within a few weeks. And if they handle that accusation like they handle their customers' bug reports, well, good ol' Darl may start sounding fairly reasonable to deal with.
This is an actual question, wasn't Wind River one of the major contributors to the fantastic development work done on FreeBSD?
If so, how could this be _bad_ for linux in any way shape or form? Even if you don't like the company, linux-heads should wake up and realize, any company that's investing in linux and open source is GOOD, look how far FreeBSD has come from 386/BSD and FreeBSD 2.x
Error 407 - No creative sig found
"it lets people change their minds when it becomes clear they can't fight the future."
Can't fight the future, or did Linux finally reach maturity? There's a big difference between fighting it kicking and screaming and simply not being able to use it because there's things it wasn't able to do.
Don't assume that everybody who avoids Linux is an idiot.
"Derp de derp."
Whenever I'm building something on VxWorks, I'm mainly cursing about having to work from a Win or Sun machine. No Tornado for Linux. I would be really, really pleased if they would just release a host-tools-suite for Linux. That would make building stuff for VxWorks a much more pleasant experience. Jumping straight to "embedded linux" support sounds a little like jumping the gun, actually. They've spent 20 years developing VxWorks, it seems to me the most natural and useful Linux support would be to release a Linux-native development kit for it.
Given their attitude and the fact that this was relatively recently, I'd say "fighting it kicking and screaming" is a much better representation than "waiting for functionality".
And I would argue that anyone who does not see the *potential* of Linux, both in terms of technology development and the bottom line, is an idiot. What I mean here are the folks who, despite the staggering amount of evidence and press to the contrary, still think of Linux and OSS software as some sort of quaint ameature effort. The head of my division is one of these guys -- we've taken to calling him "executivus obsoletus". The Wind River folks, at least the ones I talked to, were the same sorts.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Sun did a similar thing: it embraced Linux, even though doing so was to feed and support something which was cannibalizing its core business. It is now regretting that decision. Will Wind River? Alas, I suspect so. Wind River has nothing to gain by supporting Linux.
Maybe I didn't read the right articles, but I saw some belief that the GPL kernel might not mix well with the embedded world, and a perception of Linux being embraced by competitors, which caused them to try the other route: BSD.
I didn't see any kind of "Linux is no good" message coming from WRS. Maybe I missed some clueless sales-drone speeches?
The people you see making the pro-linux statements today: especially Fiddler, were making similar noises around the time I left, back in 1999. The attitude hasn't fundamentally changed, they just tried other avenues and they didn't work.
WRS has long had an idiology that the runtime is not the important piece, but that the tools are where the major development value is. This stems from the origin of the company as a tools provider for VRTX. As a result, they've supported multiple runtimes over the course of the company, at times runtimes provided by alternate vendors. Thus, the Linux thing isn't new.
What might be new is that the general open source movement is providing more and more sophisticated developer tools for free, such that their custom-packaging of GCC and gui project manager/debugger/etc aren't worth the boatload of cash they're used to charging for it.
-josh
Remember that they first told customers they could not use GPL because of licensing, and they're now embracing the very same technology.
At the same time, they have dropped the technology they told customers should use at the drop of a hat, leaving customers cold in the dark.
I would be very, very careful if you plan to use their tools; The Tools You Depend On may also disappear on a moment's notice and no longer be available tomorrow.
Why become dependent on them if there are excellent, free, alternatives?