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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.
Unless I miss recall Darl was citing Wind River as one of the companies involved in the protection of unix IP. I have to wonder if Wind River will have to pierce the corporate veil to slap him with a defamation suit.
this is exactly the sort of thing that the SCO debacle is messing up. Wind river nust clearly think twice what would happen if they made the leap to linux and next year there was a judegement which gave SCO the advantage. Perhaps it would be better to stay with windows a year longer and see what happens, the reasoning might go.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Many of their major customers (including ultraconservative telecoms) have already been doing development in Linux for sometime. Like any good businessman, they are going where the customers are. But is that where the money is? They are trying to sell a product in a market where services are the cash cow.
"First you get the Linux, then you get the power, THEN you get the women"
Slackware had some very insecure months after Wind River took over Walnut Creek and cut Slackware loose.
Ed Craig "Who cares what you think?" George W. Bush, 4th of July 2001
been using it for a year now for our Java development on an AT&T contract. Pretty sweet IDE compared to my years of using visual studio. They like not having to buy visual studio for me now as well.
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?
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Actually, I would have thought it's considerably less of an drawback to embedded system manufacturers, since you can't often use the software outside the specific embedded hardware environment it's intended for, and therefore the hardware itself practically acts as a 'dongle' for the software.
The only change for them in going GPL might be to switch from a per-unit sales model to an outright-buy one to prevent their customers from getting their
GPL source re-compiled elsewhere after the first box is delivered.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
I never knew what "ashen faced" was until I asked if I could add a couple bits to a status packet (and this was still in the design phase when things are supposed to be fluid).
--- Ban humanity.
I too read Windriver's whitepaper on embedded Linux and saw it as a ploy to downplay the feasibility of using Linux as a RTOS.
I wouldn't get too excited about anything Windriver does concerning Linux. I recently finished a project utilizing VxWorks 5.5. At every turn we were informed that we didn't currently own the package we needed to do some functionality. Of course the new package would be another $xxxx.xx or more per developer (Often plus royalty). I'm not talking about off the wall support either. Things like write protecting the program text require an additional purchase to be supported.
I'm not saying that Windriver's products are bad. In fact, I'm a fan of VxWorks in comparison to some of their competitors. I'm cautious because Windriver is a wolf in sheep's clothing. (Think Micro$oft of the RTOS world.)
Linksys has been in a lot of heat over their use of Linux but without distributing the complete source code.
In cases like these, the GPL is a hindrance...and it is easy to see why. They don't want everyone with a computer, an idea, and the appropriate compiler to be able to release their own ROM updates for their devices.
For many of these companies, the GPL is in the way of their adoption of Open Source solutions....which seems self defeating for the OS movement.
clifgriffin > blog
That is incorrect. I would like to point out IBM HTTP Server as an example of a project that a company (IBM) participates with that has a BSD/MIT style license.
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?
That is why it is usually one company that is heavily involved with any particular GPL project. As they hold the copyright, they can still release proprietary releases (StarOffice). Any other company that comes along would have great difficulty (usually impossible) in doing the same. "What's business friendly" about that?
Ignoring the license issue, Wind River has not exactly been kind to either the Linux (Slackware) or FreeBSD camps. It is a shame, but I would not trust them.