Slashdot Mirror
Red Hat will give eCos Copyrights to the FSF!
An anonymous reader notes "Businesswire reports in this article that RedHat will assign its copyrights for the eCos embedded OS to the FSF. This is great news, considering that they have stopped developing it in 2002. Hopefully this will mean new life for the project."
You mean like HURD?
Je t'aime Stéphanie
how come it looks like they added CPU architectures and features in 2003?
Blogging Weight Loss, Distance Education, and more at verlin.com
Notice this is a healty tax writeoff at the beginning of the year. Hmmmm....
The web site indecates new development as recent as September of last year.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I used to work for a large consulting company (their name starts with "A" and ends with "con," if that's any clarification) that developed an embedded OS. This OS, "Clarix," was highly advanced and far superior to the piece of commercial dreck they bought for pennies on the dollar. They then jettisoned all the Clarix developers, but the large company retained copyrights on all their "intellectual property."
I am highly gladdened to see Red Hat doing the right thing: when they no longer have a use for a product, they give the product away so that future hackers can leverage its power. Kudos to you, Red Hat!
Sincerely,
Seth Finklestein
Retired Developer
I'm not Seth Finkelstein. I still speak the truth.
SCO/FSF/GNU/eCos
Hopefully this will mean new life for the project.
I guess that kind of depends on whether anyone cares or not. Most people who might have used eCos for the commercial support aspect, are using the high powered and rock-solid QNX OS. And those who wanted free embedded OSes for home projects are already using Embedded Linux or *BSD. Even more difficult for eCos is that embedded Linux and *BSD distros are usually custom to the application. Why would anyone want the overhead of a prepackaged solution?
Perhaps eCos has its uses, but it's a very small niche.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Is this the first time a software developer has expressly relinquished copyright for abandonware? Of course, eCos was never proprietary, so it's not quite the same...
I wonder what license the FSF will put on the copyrights when they get them?
As much as everyone seems to hate Red Hat for being big and pushing for what they want, I have to say that I truly respect them. They've never been anything but fair, honest, and helpful to the OSS community. Sure, they sometimes make unpopular decisions, but they focus on their business and don't try to meddle in anyone else's. And they've certainly never pulled any stunt worthy of calling them the 'Microsoft of Linux' as gets thrown about from time to time. The worst they've ever done is ask that people redistributing their distro use a different name and artwork. I can't see how anyone could have a problem with that.
And as this shows, they often go above and beyond the mere requirements of the GPL. They've released a good amount of software under the GPL when they really didn't have to. They pay a lot of developers' salaries, too.
So I'd like to say thanks, Red Hat. I have nothing but good feelings toward you, and I hope you do better and better financially.
(Full disclosure: I don't work for Red Hat, don't own any of their stock, etc. I knew one guy who worked for them, but he was a tech support grunt there for a few months and I wasn't even in contact with him then. These opinions are my own.)
- fader
I always thought that code based on GPLed code falls under the GPL anyway and must be published.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
Indeed, this is great news. And this is one copyright I won't mind respecting :-)
It's good to see a company with its head screwed on straight, who can acknowledge when its time to move on from old wares and just let them go, instead of clinging to everything it's ever had its hands in, even when it's obviously pointless to do so.
Help protect civil rights from abuse by the TSA - visit TSA News Blog.
http://www.tsanewsblog.com
I see on the eCos site a listing of support platforms, but can anyone point me to an actual project/product that used eCos?
Thanks in advance.
---anactofgod---
---anactofgod---
"Equal opportunity swindling - *that* is the true test of a sustainable democracy."
The Linux-Dreamcast port apparently uses eCos to do some of the initial booting. So, while I wouldn't say I've seen it used practically, it was a nifty application of the OS.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
that the actual development was done prior to 2003 and only implemented in 2003. Just a guess, though, I could be wrong.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
I'm a Redhat shareholder, not a lot of shares, and bought well after they bottomed out. I bought the shares for two reasons.
.50/share. So as a stockholder hoping to make money on my investment, I'm not too thrilled with this kind of news.
;-).
.02 (- .50)
The first was because I thought if any company had a shot a taking a piece of Microsoft, it was Redhat. I use MS products everyday, probably always will, but I'm one who believes that MS got where they are with unfair market practices and ended up a little too big for their (and our) own good. By buying Redhat shares, I figured I was backing up my philosophy with my wallet.
The second reason is purely more pragmatic. Assuming Linux can take a stab at Microsoft, I believe Redhat is the most viable company to do it. In 30+ years, I'd like to think my decision to buy Redhat shares (when it was $12.00 a share) will be similar to people who bought Cisco, Oracle, MS, etc... back in the day. Sure the stock prices have wildly fluctuated, but look at the splits, and you realize just how much money there was to be made. So of course I would like to see that kind of return on this investment.
Which is why I end up conflicted when I see news like this. On the one hand, giving away a copyright is exactly the kind of collaboration you see with the Linux development model, and why it *may* in the end surpass MS in some, if not all, applications. But as a shareholder, giving away copyrights is hardly a way to grow a business. It took time, money, and effort to secure the copyright. Who knows if this news really effected shareprice, but with the release of this news, Redhat is down almost
I suppose that's why you need to leave your emotional mind out of the market place, to avoid investing with your heart, and not your head
just my
jeff
I'm not certain what effect if any this has on the development of the software. To correct several misinformed posts: As the article mentions Red Hat stopped development on the project in 2002. The community continued which is why you see new releases after then. Second, the software was already open source - the licence has not changed. What has changed is that they given copyright over to FSF. The reason for this is that it is easier from a legal standpoint for the copyright of a project to be held by a single entity who can defend the entire project rather than each little peice being copyright of the respective authors. Since Redhat was no longer actively developing eCos, it made since for them to turn over the copyright to someone else. But unless people were resistant to contribute because RedHat still maintained copyright, I don't see how this will give the project new life. What may help more is having the fact that the project has a new maintainer (and the front-page slashdot article won't hurt either ;)
Maybe hacking eCos will give us the first "high powered, rock-solid and truly Free" embedded OS.
...Red Hat has been a decent company. They usually make their stance clear and try to be honest at all times. That being said, their product distribution methodology could use some work. They have burned customers time and time again by distributing pre-release software that lacked polish. This would tend to result in oddities in their OSes such as USB mouse lockups, GNOME menus that lose their icons when installing user icons, kernel versions that are unsupported by hardware drivers such as NVidia (thank God NVidia found a way to fix that), and installations that randomly self-destruct. While I understand the pressures of the market place, a more stable codebase would inspire much more confidence in their customers.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Vendors go bankrupt, exit a field of business, or simply discontinue products all the time. Deals like this could help small vendors, providing long-term customer assurance.
This isn't abandonware in the traditional sense, where copyright is "relinquished" into the public domain. Rather, they are transferring the copyright to another organization, for them to retain copyright and re-license as they see fit. Assuming they GPL it, the code would be distributable and enforcable accordingly.
First of all, let's say this loud and clear:
eCos is not abandonware!
Development has continued throughout the project's life. I think the only thing that was in question was who the code actually belonged to. It's always been GPL'ed.
As to what it's used for, I don't know about commercially, but I've used it for a couple of fun/learning projects: "Scivoli" - a bootable floppy image that loads jpegs from the floppy and displays the to the screen, and "ZOG", which is the ficl forth interpreter layered on top of eCos. Neither one makes much claim to being all that useful, but Scivoli especially shows off how small the OS and display code is (about 130K without much effort at all to reduce it). It would be difficult to squeeze Linux onto a floppy with a bunch of images like I have done. Both are available from http://dedasys.com/freesoftware.
eCos is fun for those learning about OS's because it's well written code, modular, and small enough that it's easier to get a handle on than Linux.
http://www.welton.it/davidw/
Wasn't that nice of moderators to moderate a polite comment out of existence? So, I'll repost it at +2 and if that gets modded to -1, I'll post it again. Here's the original response:
Here we have an example of the rarest of birds, an informed and insightful post... on slashdot.
QNX truly is the king of kings.
To which I replied:
Check my posting history. I don't always get it right, but I always attempt to present an informed and useful opinion.
And if you don't care for friendly banter, you can mark me as a foe. I'll get all broken up about it. Really. (rolls eyes)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
looks like September 19, 2003 was the last update. What to do you mean by "stopped developing in 2002"?
The moderation system actually discourages discussion and rewards one shot posts that leave little or no room for debate. Check out the shit that floats to the top and you'll see the trend.
Don't tell me you expected fair moderation here on Slashdot?
No, but I'm well aware of what I can do about it. Moderators only have 5 points and can moderate a post only once. Reposting stuff at +2 that was at 0 and +1 respectively, gives the rouge mods a hard target to hit. Even worse, it draws attention to their poor moderation, so meta-mods who view in context will (hopefully) slam these guys.
Now go out there and troll the hell out of Slashdot!
Not on my watch. By God, I'll have an intelligent conversation if it kills me.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Saying this is like saying that you can deduct your hourly wage for the time you spend volenteering att he soup kitchen after work.
You can deduct goods, not time or services rendered. Not unless the donation of those services have a direct impact on your companies bottom line (ie, the donation nof thoe services meant lost time where you could have made profit from soemthing else ).
Slashdotters are too young and culturally illiterate to bite on your sig troll. Maybe you should try misattributing a quote from Lord of the Rings or something like that, that would probably work. HTH.
It was under a different Open Source license.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
The Open Source license that Red Hat used for eCos isn't the GPL nor is it compatible with the same.
With the FSF recieving ownership of the Copyrights on the code in question, you can bet your bottom dollar that it will be relicensed under the GPL or LGPL the moment that the ownership changes hands.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
how TRON would fit into this discussion?
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
I like this post, very much.
Can someone explain it please?
The main people working on eCos got laid off in Red Hat's small downsizing in 2002. The work you see is from the community and the company founded by the people that got laid off.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I read at 0. -1 has all the troll bullsh*t that's not very pleasent to read.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I wonder what licence Microsoft uses when they buy FSF.
There are two circumstances in which a company can buy out a solvent company: 1. if the bought company agrees to the deal ("friendly takeover"), or 2. if the bought company is publicly held and the buying company has cash to burn ("hostile takeover"). The FSF is a 501(c)(3) charity, and it does not agree to being bought by Microsoft, SCO, Unisys, or any other large publisher of proprietary software. In fact, can charities be publicly held? And even if Microsoft were to take over FSF, it wouldn't be able to revoke the GNU General Public License that covers the copyrights on its already published software.
I can tell you the PortalPlayer chip doesn't have an MMU, and thus the:
iPod (all of them, including mini)
Samsung Napster
Philips HD100
Rio Karma
don't have MMUs.
That's a large portion of the market, and the high-end to boot. Protected memory is generally not considered overly useful in consumer products since all it does is crash you when you do something wrong. The #2 thing you don't want to do on a consumer device is crash/hang.
Of these, none run Linux either, except for the Karma.
What are you talking about and what does it have to do with the "liberal media"?
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
A spin off from the plan9 project was Inferno.
The 4th Edition is now released under a dual licence such that all source code is available under a Free licence (as defined by the FSF). The GPL it isn't but it brings the world of Limbo into the open.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
The slashdot summary is (*shock*) misleading. Officially Redhat stopped support and laid off the eCos developers, but the core developer as well as the at-large developers have been continuously developing eCos after Redhat backed out. In fact, I didn't start developing the AT91/EB40 port of eCos until after Redhat dropped it. Commits to CVS were slow since they had to be funnelled through the former Redhat developers which were fewer and number and looking for new sources of income, but development has been continuous.
Same question and same answer posted almost verbatim half an hour earlier. Has RTFA expanded to include even the Slashdot comments themselves? The original was only the 2nd post in the story and the first thing I saw when I read this thread.
Liberal media...is it good, or is it whack?
It looks like MS Office has found a way to spread it's /.
gibberish by posting as an AC to
I'm surprised I hadn't noticed earlier.
Let's use Microsoft for an example, since they're so fun to pick on here on Slashdot.
Let's say MS was to release the source to Windows 98 4 years from now. Obviously no support for the software, MS is hoping everyone has upgraded. So, IMMEDIATELY people begin ripping the code apart, seeing blatant software security issues in the code.
Who is responsible for the ensuing chaos that results from the hacks and cracks that occur because now everyone knows where the buffer overflows are. Microsoft indemnifies themself, and then the user of the original software is left to hang.
I can think of one good example. I'm still a big fan of Quake II, and since the code release, there have been some SERIOUS cheats developed.
Just a thought
Can you ping me now? Gooood! | Manhappenin.Net - Things to do
So it's open source - add them :-) Or pay someone else to add them. Unlike proprietary RTOS's, you can't get fleeced for even the smallest changes because Megacorp has the source code and you don't. Even if you want to pay someone else, you can't be charged silly prices like they sometimes do because you can always compare against how much it would cost you to do it yourself.
Since you've used eCos, you should already have seen how modular it is, and in particular you may have seen that it is designed to allow you to add new schedulers should you want.
What's more, being open source, it only takes one person or company to add them, or pay for them to be developed, and everyone can benefit and eCos moves forwards.
You must be new here.
eCos has been actively supported by the ex-eCos development team ( www.ecoscentric.com) and other developers since the day RedHat cut the team loose. It is a very nice embedded RTOS.
Shouldn't the eCos system be under the
authority of the EPA?
Captain Clueless
So, get rid of it. Turn off comment scores in your comments prefs and browse at -1, oldest first nested. I did and Slashdot almost looks entertaining again.
The Rio Karma (extremely cool HD-based MP3/OGG/FLAC jukebox iPod killer) runs eCos, according to its developers- the same guys that created the Empeg/Rio Car players that run Linux. Here's Rio's site.
I didn't believe your article referenced here (now deleted) when read it, but now I do.
Wikileaks, no DNS
This is redhat's way of saying sorry about the Fedora thing that pissed alot of people off.
:)
(translation)
I suspect this is redhat's way of donating technology they weren't making any money off of and using the Positive PR to make up for Negative PR they recieved last time they dumped liabilities onto the community.
Either way, works for me, thanks redhat
w00! An Free Software platform against which we can create iTRON apps! (see here)
:-)
'course, there's already an open-source (or Public Domain) iTRON OS out there, but all the source comments are in Japanese.
From the GNU GPL boilerplate text:
If the FSF were to go evil, redistributors of GNU programs would have every right to fork them under "version 2 of the License". Some authors such as Linus Torvalds have already planned for such an event, removing the "any later version" verbiage from the GPL boilerplate attached to their programs.
So this shouldnt really change anything.
It would just be interesting to see how the FSF will _interpret_ the license which is basically a GPL with a big hole in it.
The license is supposed to be designed for embedded application, but now that FSF is in charge it would be more difficult for companies to discuss with FSF rather than to a company like RedHat.
I dont really have experience with QNX but I have developped with both eCos and uClinux. I can tell you that you can do things a lot more custom with eCos than linux with much less overhead.
Actually, I mentioned in a comment a bit ago I'd have a "I blame the liberal media" day where that's all I commented. I tested to see if people would laugh. Instead I get cursed at. Oh well.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Naturally, I hope development will continue, much of my interest is in smaller things like microcontrollers where this is of use.
See Subject line.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
It's the fault of our conservative media, I say! ;-)
Wikileaks, no DNS
Hopefully you understand why I now metamod all negative moderations as unfair.
"Derp de derp."
When you metamod GNAA posts, do you metamod their troll moderation as "unfair" because of principle?
The reason we have negative mods is so things like Goatse.cx links, GNAA trolls, and random off-topic posts don't interrupt the actual discussion. You may not like the fact that some posts get negative mods, but it's for the greater good. If we didn't have neg mods and metamods, the whole place would be overrun by trolls.
Karma: Contrapositive