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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. Hmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Guess they are trying to get full value out of thir $699 payment.

  2. 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.

  3. Plan A or Plan B Linux Adoption Strategies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Plan A - Embrace Linux

    Plan B - Close eyes and ears as long as possible, then move to Plan A

    Looks like they went for Plan B.

  4. 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"
  5. 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.

  6. Who'd of thought it would come to this? by theoldmoose · · Score: 5, Informative
    As a recipient of one of the local Wind River's sales office's highly anti-Linux sales pitches, my boss, who is generally neutral about such things, was particularly put off by the condescending attitude on the part of the sales folks and the white paper they were circulating. The effect was that they were taking us as a bunch of uneducated fools, because we might be considering using Linux in an upcoming embedded project.

    In fact, the project was one that had been 'orphaned' by Wind River, because they had bought out ISI, and 'deep-sixed' PSOS (thanks, guys). Faced with having to re-write all the OS interfaces in the code to upgrade to faster processors, we figured it would be just about as much trouble to move to a Linux-based system, and that would 'future-proof' us against further corporate shenanigans.

    I had used VxWorks in the past on other projects, and had achieved a nice working relationship with the local Wind River sales and engineering support folks. Wind River's behavior over the last few years, though, has pretty much destroyed that.

    Wind River may be trying to jump on the band wagon now, but it may already be too late. Folks like me have long memories.

  7. 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.

  8. 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.