Linux Now Top Choice Of Embedded Developers

An anonymous reader writes "According to an article at LinuxDevices.com, the latest market research data from Venture Development Corp. shows that Linux is now firmly in first place as the OS of choice for smart gadgets and embedded systems. VDC's latest data indicates that Linux now accounts for 15.5% of embedded projects, beating out Microsoft's WinCE (6%) and XPe (5%), and Wind River's VxWorks (10.3%)."

Comments

An Important and Often Overlooked Front

[Dominatus]

Linux success is almost always measured in the desktop and/or server markets, and very rarely in the embedded market. It's refreshing to see an article showing the strength on Linux in a market that has a lot of potential but little of the glamour.

Makes a lot of sense to me

[JavaRob]

Putting an OS on a small device is a task that tends to require a lot of tweaking... when you're making it small, you tend to make a lot of compromises, and small devices tend to be much more diverse than personal computers and servers (well, duh).

So -- what OS is better suited to this kind of application? The open source one with plenty of developers out there, tweaking it as we speak, where the developers of your hardware can be shaping the embedded OS as they build the prototype? ...Or the one written and managed by a single company who, yes, has talented developers, but none of whom are on-site working with you?

Not that I'm the only one saying this, of course, but this is a great chance for the Linux model to shine.

the GPL is a mine field.

[Roman_(ajvvs)]

I work at a manufacturing company, and by chance we spent half of last week researching development issues under different OS's. Currently we use a variety of Microsoft OS's in our systems and we want to keep our options as open as possible.

There are as yet unresolved issues with the use of binary software with GPL software in general and linux specifically, despite linus' assurances that userspace code doesn't require GPL license compatibility and that he won't enforce that section of the GPL. Linus is using the GPL license as written by the FSF, albeit fixed to V.2 and with some specific modifications. They (linus and the FSF) disagree on on the details of whether or not using GPL-licensed header files forces the software using them to be be under a GPL-compatible license. Even linus admits there are grey areas and his interpretation has been debated. Until this matter is resolved definitively (probably in court), I don't want to place my company at risk of being forced to release code that we do not want to release, simply because we compiled our software for linux.

What we found, is that the GPL, LGPL and other FSF licenses are very problematic when dealing with the control of code(proprietry or otherwise). The GPL licensing terms are very strict and dangerous in terms of source code-ownership vs binary code-distribution and legal obligations.
The FSF cannot of course, enforce the GPL for software they don't own the copyright for. However, the licensing conditions and restrictions of the GPL automatically come into effect without much influence from the actual copyright holders. We're left to the whims of copyright owners and their good word to decide what is considered a breach and what is 'tolerated'. As we see more GPL software being used by companies with proprietry code, I think we'll see a nasty side of the GPL rear its head as enforcement starts to kick in from different areas. Boundaries of legality are constantly tested, when they are wide and filled with grey.
Just because you don't get charged with doing something illegally as you do it, that doesn't mean that you can't get prosecuted afterwards, if someone feels like going after you.

Re:the GPL is a mine field.

[ADRA]

If you've read ANYTHING about the SCO case, its that you can't hand out API's (erm LSB) and then turn around and sue anyone for using that interface (regardless of the distribution license). Imagine the anti-trust lawsuits of MS sueing a competitor xyz for implementing private API function xyz which makes the program twice as fast while implementing it themselves.

There is also discussion that it may be impossible to enforce copyright's for API's at all. Under fair-use laws, I believe that anyone can have the right to implement the API as long as its been released to the public in one form or the other. I can't remember all the details, but it was something along those lines.

The only cases that I've really seen developers going after vendors is when they take GPL copyrighted code lock stock and barrel and put it in their own systems without credit, source, or some other blatently obvious GPL violation (Netfilter, etc..).

The reason is simple,...

[Maljin Jolt]

...it is by invisible hand of the market. Development costs for embedded on Linux are lower, no matter what FUD about GPL are Microsoft vassals posting on Slashdot. Because embedded incarnations of Linux are very consistent with desktop ones.

An example from real life:

My girlfriend wrote some custom app (database client frontend +some .net stuff) for PocketPC using WinCE emulator in Windows XP. With a real pain, because running emulator took 98% of desktop CPU doing nothing. It was worth a new computer, two months of her work and many grey hairs to complete the task.

I replicated her effort on the identical hardware (HP iPaq, but with Linux flashed in) in three days. The trick I used was a http server running inside iPaq (sic!), calling local python scripts to query remote database and generate html content to local browser.

Guess, from these two implementations, which one is easier and/or cheaper to support?

Can you, Microsoft drones, stuff IIS or any existing COM/DCOM components you already payed for on Win32 into some WinCE device?