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Wind River Moving Towards Linux

Posted by Hemos on from the sizing-each-other-up dept.

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.

9 of 100 comments (clear)

  1. Wasnt wind river one of the SCO posterchildren by Crashmarik · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  2. Not a surprise by RoboOp · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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"
  3. Slackware by epcraig · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Until Wind River is endorsed by Patrick Volkerding, their good intentions will be for naught in Slackware quarters.

    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
    1. Re:Slackware by smed · · Score: 5, Interesting

      oh...yeah. After the way Wind River strung Patrick & Co. along for nearly a year before cutting them loose, seriously stalling his meticulous development efforts, I can't possibly support anything this company puts its grubby little hands into.
      Screw them.
      I doubt this effort is going to improve their rapport in the Linux community anyway. Imagine...taking one of the finest and most stable Linux distros avail and tossing them out on their asses to fend for themselves...and then deciding 2 years later that it might have been a mistake.
      Even if Patrick sprinkled this with Holy Water.....I'd never feel comfortable doing business with such short-sightedness.
      Again...screw them.

  4. I love Eclipse by niall111 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  5. GPL is causing Wind River wariness of Linux? by Cryofan · · Score: 4, Interesting
    THis article highlights another example of the GPL causing corporate wariness of Linux:

    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
    1. Re:GPL is causing Wind River wariness of Linux? by FatRatBastard · · Score: 5, Interesting

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

      Why revise it? Its not like its the only software license in the world, or for that matter the only "open" license. If Wind River doesn't like the GPL it can always use BSDi (which it owns) or anything else under the BSD license. Problem solved.

  6. All I know about Wind River is... by HarveyBirdman · · Score: 5, Interesting
    ...that we use VxWorks extensively around where I work, and everytime we need some minor addition to an embedded application, it's like we asked the software engineers to sacrifice their own mothers to some dark Old God. And it isn't even like it's *real* embedded applications where it's all solid state and firmware and PROMs. This is stuff like VXI Slot 0 PCs with hard drives and monitor/mouse/keyboard ports.

    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.
  7. Windriver Sales Tactics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.)