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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."
how come it looks like they added CPU architectures and features in 2003?
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Notice this is a healty tax writeoff at the beginning of the year. Hmmmm....
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...
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'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
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.
My last company used eCos to build handheld and stereo component MP3 players, so that's my experience with it. In the handheld space it was great; small footprint (i built 40K ram/200K rom mp3+wma players with it), low overhead, minimal MMU requirements. The problem, with that space at least, is that the entire segment has shifted to faster processors with better MMUs, bigger hard drives, and generally larger requirements, which warrants using Linux. Even the eCos team was aware of this, as they started adding support for CPUs with memory protection and implementing more advanced OS features, basically scaling eCos up to...a trimmed down Linux.
It was very good and extremely competitive at the time though; i think the issue is just that this time has passed.
-- Patience is a virtue, but impatience is an art.
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
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