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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."
You mean like HURD?
Je t'aime Stéphanie
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....
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
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.
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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.
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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.
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
There are loads of commercial products and projects using eCos. See http://www.ecoscentric.com/ecos/examples.shtml
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 ;)
...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.
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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.
If you are interested in developing with eCos the only book I know of is
Embedded Software Development with eCos
First chapter of the book...
Read the rest of the chapter yourself.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
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)
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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 ).
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
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
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.
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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.
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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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.
It's probably cheaper to port your apps to Linux than to pay someone to enhance eCos. Plus, Linux has had this stuff for a while; it's tested, it's known to be stable. Any new implimentation might have inefficiencies, which adds more worries.
I'm talking out of my ass, since I don't know eCos or any RTOS, but I'm guessing that it's a simple matter of economics.
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