Wind River Moving Towards Linux

An anonymous reader writes "LinuxDevices reports that Wind River, the world's #1 embedded software company, moved two steps closer to Linux today, with a pair of announcements that it has joined two key organizations. Wind River has joined the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) and says it plans to contribute to the OSDL's Carrier Grade Linux (CGL) working group. Wind River also announced that it has joined the Eclipse Consortium, an industry group devoted to an open cross-vendor platform for development tools integration, and that it is committed to the Eclipse platform 'to enable global enterprises to standardize embedded development on a single, open standards-based integrated development environment (IDE).' This follows an October Linux tools announcement which it called 'just the first step.'" We had also covered the initial announcement.

Comments

Business Friendly License

[dmaxwell]

The BSD license may be for friendly for companies that want to use FOSS but it usually isn't for companies that participate in FOSS. What's business friendly about a competitor taking your stuff, adding secret sauce to it, and then freezing you out of a market you may have created?

Re:Business Friendly License

[edhall]

This is pure FUD. No one can make BSD code proprietary. Yes, they can add their own stuff to it, and keep their version to themselves. But the origial code is as free as it ever was. The only way for a competitor to "freeze you out" is for them to enhance the codebase to such an extent that you can't do so yourself. And at that point I think there might be a credible argument that the creator of those enhancements deserves to profit from them if they wish. You may argue differently -- I've no problem with folks who want to exclude this option, or with the GPL itself. But the fact remains, BSD-licensed code remains free no matter what someone makes out of it, contrary to what some people claim.

-Ed

Wind River == WIN DRIVER

[aphor]

Conspiracy theorists go nuts!

Seriously, who pays this company for what and why should they even care? They bought Walnut Creek CDROM when the consumer Internet connections got fast enough for people to stop buying CDROMs full of free software. Why? Walnut Creek hosted a big FTP server and had some CDROM mastering coing on. Did Wind River need distribution for their products to get them out to a wider audience? Why is there both BSDMall.com and FreeBSDMall.com?

In this day and age you should know to understand a business by the needs it fills and whose cash is represented in sales. Wind River is a mystery. Proceed with caution.

Re:GPL is causing Wind River wariness of Linux?

[Grizzlysmit]

In this article by Mike Downing of Integrated Communications Design, Wind River's Vice President of Corporate Marketing, Curt Schacker, expresses his company's concerns about the viability of using GPL-based software (like Linux) in embedded applications. "More customers are telling us that they see interesting aspects to Linux . . . but we're seeing a growing problem due to the growing uncertainty of using GPL-based code in embedded development," says Wind Rivers's Schaker according to Downing.

What are the options for revising the GPL, if any?

Ah yes, so we should revise it so it's easier to steal, like BSD??, face it there is no problem with GPL unless you want to distribute your own mods without GPL'ing the source, as soon as a company says this, you know their intensions arn't honest. If they were truely going open source the GPL wouldn't bother them.

This is why for my money, GPL and LGPL are the only sane licences, I'd never use BSD or any of those gutless ones, if I give something, it's gunna stay given.

The GPL is good as it is

[DVega]

The GPL was designed to promote Free Software. The idea embodied in this licence, is that once a piece of code is put under the GPL, this code and any descendat of it will be free forever.

The GPL is not intended to promote bussiness or propietary software. If that is your intention you need another license.

Re:Despite the name

[HiThere]

Considering their history, I rather hope that this *IS* just PR work. I'd just as soon that they stayed completely away from any system I plan to acutally use.

Of course, sometimes companies change. But don't believe it just because they say it, don't believe it until AFTER they have proven it.

And even then... IBM has been a good friend recently. But I still keep a wary eye on them, in memory of things past.

Also, consider: Without Sun, OpenOffice.org wouldn't exist. We owe Sun a tremendous debt. But this same Sun appearantly spent quite a large sum of money recently on SCO. While continuing to support OpenOffice.org. If you look at any one action, the motives seem plain, but if you look at several, things get confusing. Because companies don't have a single personality running things, and frequently don't have a unified policy (except when they coerce themselves into presenting one for the sake of appearances).