Wind River Joins the Mobile Linux Fray

An anonymous reader writes "Embedded software powerhouse Wind River launched a Consumer Electronics Linux distribution today targeting 'mobile phones, set-top boxes, PVRs, and other small-footprint consumer devices.' The company says several phones based on its brand of Linux will begin shipping before the end of this year, and is rumored to have teamed with PalmSource, which itself is busy converting Palm OS into a software stack for Linux mobile phones."

Comments

Where is it?

[TurboStar]

Looking over the Wind River site I was unable to find any information about this. It looks interesting for use in my next project. Oh well, I guess it's vaporware or they really aren't intested in supporting it. I'll go back to finishing making my own distro.

Re:Where is it?

[Dr Pepper 2005]

We're happy to tell you more about the Wind River - Linux offerings. Please call our hotline number: 800-545-WIND and ask for extension 2888. Wind River

Is this the same wind river that maintains

[Trigun]

PyQT and PyKDE bindings?

Re:Is this the same wind river that maintains

[Anonymous Coward]

PyQT and PyKDE bindings?

I think you mean Riverbank.

Re:Is this the same wind river that maintains

[Trigun]

Yes, that was the one. Thank you for refreshing my memory. It's been a few years since I looked at those.

Good thing is

[cached]

The good thing is that in any event, multi-vendor competition bodes well for Linux's chances against single-vendor operating systems such as Windows Mobile and Symbian, since competitors in the Linux space end up contributing to an evolving shared base of open source software.

Re:Good thing is

[rufty_tufty]

Really, last I heard more people buy the bulk of their things from Wallmart than from their local grocer.
Isn't too many options a bad thing that as a customer of Linux I don't know who to buy.

Last I checked a few goliaths competing tended to advance further than lots of Davids each with the fixed overheads then repeating the same work.

That said, Windriver do some pretty nifty RTOS stuff with VxWorks, so I'm glad they're progressing with their Linux solution

Re:Good thing is

[Akoma The Immortal]

No No No. You are supposed to say:

"The good thing is that in any event, multi-vendor competition DOES NOT bode well for Linux's chances against single-vendor operating systems such as Windows Mobile and Symbian, since competitors in the Linux space end up contributing to an regressing shared base of pirated software."

I will cancell you check and send SB to your office for chair reorganization.

Sincerely,

Billy G,
CEO, CFO, Chairman and what not.

Re:Good thing is

[Deliveranc3]

Are you out of your mind?

Compare that to incompatibilities and the poor hardware support that inevitably follows in the plethora of linux OSs that hit!

These guys won't be releasing open source drivers they'll release binary drivers with API support and the LINUX pocket OSs will make a mess of them, IF the OS gets developed in house it MIGHT be ok.

But none of the qualities that make linux superior are applicable to devices that are best served with PalmOS.

It is increadibly stable, user friendly and compatible, and from a handheld perspective that's all you need.

Rumored to have teamed with PalmSource?

[Sam Haine '95]

From TFA:

It will be interesting to see whether newcomer PalmSource, which is busy converting Palm OS into a software stack running on Linux, taps Wind River as a Linux OS partner in the mobile phone space, as has been rumored. For its part, however, MontaVista already announced an alliance with PalmSource in August.

PalmSource have always claimed that PalmOS-for-Linux is to be distro-agnostic, allowing the hardware manufacterer to decide which distro to use.

Re:Rumored to have teamed with PalmSource?

[dougllio]

Perhaps, but that doesn't preclude them from entering into partnerships with the OS providers that do want to license Palm software.

Liscensing

[rufty_tufty]

Looking at the article they're planning to liscense this on a per devloper per year basis. One thing I don't get though is how this fits in with the GPL, surely the key thing Windriver offer is tweeks to the kernel to make it a good RTOS and associted BSPs for the various phones. But those would have to be GPLed as well.
So what is there here that isn't GPLed and therefore why would someone pay for this? Or is it the tools, this CELF of which they speak?

Re:Liscensing

[slashflood]

Or is it the tools, this CELF of which they speak?

Consumer Electronics Linux Forum (CELF) (currently down)

All the major consumer electronics comanies are members of CELF.

Re:Liscensing

[thegrassyknowl]

WindRiver still sell their ScopeTools (MemScope, ProfileScope, StethoScope) that rely on a proprietary backend being loaded onto the Linux box. I, personally, don't think the tools are worth the price of the plastic in the CDs they come on. Others here seem to like them.

You also get WindRiver Workbench (an Eclipse plugin). It's cute but there are better editors and debuggers out there if you must pay for them. I prefer Emacs for editing and good old-fashioned Makefiles for building. I much prefer DDD (data display debugger) which is based on GDB for debugging.

Their "system Viewer" (aka WindView) is nothing more than the free (speech/beer) Linux Trace Tool (LTT) from http://www.opersys.com/LTT/.

WindRiver also have a very restrictive license that tries to claim you're not allowed to redistribute the source code to any of the GPL tools. I haven't read it in full but that is the general gist of it.

Management types seem to love them because they have "support". Support is fine, when support can help. I don't see how paying approx $50k US/year for "support" works when I have solved all of the problems we find with the Linux distributions we have used. Speaking of problems, the only ones with real problems were the expensive "commercial" ones.

MontaVista are probably the most trimmed down and GPL friendly of the embedded Linux crowds. They give out their distro on CD and because It's GPL'd they can't stop you using it. Their supplied "tools" are based on OSS tools like GDB. We weren't allowed to even see the tools before we paid for them. They claim that there are screenshots available; like that really helps decide if it's good!

BlueCat won't work unless your development host is RedShit9. They use an encrypted ISO image that they mount via loopback to install. Of course, they were too dumb to use a real encryption and, instead, used XOR so the password is visible just by looking into the encrypted file with Less. You can then xor the file agains the password to get an unencrypted ISO that you can mount and install. Their distro looks like it was based on Scratchbox (see below). Their "tools" are also based on OSS tools. They let us see the tool at a demo by the sales guy, but they wouldn't let us actually get hands-on to see what the tool could really do.

BuildRoot is GPL and free (speech and beer). It comes from the uClibc group and makes a uClibc-based distro. It works beautifully and has a wonderful mailing list/support. It is a piece of cake to add packages to it and get it to build them for you. I added some very complex pieces of software with almost zero effort apart from making a makefile to do various parts of the build (download the tarball, uncompress it, untar it, configure it, make it, install it, clean it). All you have to do is put in the right commands to do each of those steps under the right targets. You can have your package appear in their make menuconfig menu and it has a cool dependency arrangement so it's easy to remove packages without breaking anything.

Scratchbox is similar, but it attempts to create an entire hidden build environment inside your host that you chroot into to use. You can build/install everything inside of it without really worrying about cross compile issues (you're in a chroot so the compiler/headers/libs are defaulted to cross compile correctly). It's also free as in beer. Scratchbox can build anything, including Linux, BSD, glibc, uclibc on i386, arm, ppc, etc. It doesn't care as long as you can build a toolchain to put inside of it before you start building packages.

There are also umpteen other tiny Linux builds to do different things available and they are all free. There are routers, firewalls, mail servers, single disk console-based things, two disk X-things with web browsers, etc.

These companies make a profit by relying on the ignorance of management-types that want "support" and think that paying for something is good business sense because it must be good. This is the problem you get when you let accountants run businesses instead of engineers! If you want support, pay for it, otherwise get buildroot or Scratchbox and have quality.

Re:Liscensing

[OpalMirror]

Companies actually get business done by partnering with other companies -- business relationships. Business relationships allow the companies to divide the problem solving space up. For example, telecomm company T is tired of having 6 internal Linux development teams (say 40 people overall) for their product line all learning and solving the same problems over and over, and tries to collect them into one team. While they do this they also consider an OS vendor that might be able to do the same thing. They decide that forming a businesz partnership with an OS vendor will let them reduce duplication and waste and headcount, so that their engineers can focus on writing good telecomm system and application code, instead of being OS and distribution people. It may end up saving them money and headcount and be more responsive in their Telecomm marketplace. The OS Vendor may also have a stronger relationship with vendors of new CPU chips and splitting up the arch-specific/arch-generic parts of the kernel. In-depth expertise about the general OS stuff no longer needs to reside and be expensed at T, instead it can reside at the OS Vendor. This makes shareholders and managers happier.

"pristine kernel sources"

[jhoger]

So is the kernel redistributable under the GPL once it has been patched by WindRiver's wizard? Anyone know the license they use on the patches, or do you end up with a tainted kernel which cannot be redistributed without a separate license agreement from WindRiver?

Such a wizard sounds like a great way to sneak around the license to me, or at least pass on liability to customers.

-- John

Re:"pristine kernel sources"

[$RANDOMLUSER]

More likely, they'll be removing things to make it smaller.

Re:"pristine kernel sources"

[grasshoppa]

In that situation, the kernel source is still covered under the gpl, as would be any patches they apply to the pristine tree. Which would mean they'd have to redistribute the source.

As I understand it. IANAL, FYI, BYOB, MMO, PHP and ECT...

Re:"pristine kernel sources"

[jhoger]

Well, it seems clear that the customer would have an obligation to when they distribute it. The creator of the wizard supplies a tool that downloads the kernel from kernel.org and patches it. The user runs the tool, so the user downloads the kernel, the user does the patches. the user redistributes the end result in their product.

Who has liability? The end user certainly. But what about the creator of the wizard? Quite possibly, none at all.

The creator of the wizard never redistributed the kernel, so the GPL is not binding on them. Patches typically contain some context information (lines of source) for syncing up the patch tool, but that could be considered 'fair use.'

-- John.

Why would I want such a thing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why on earth would I want a WinDriver in my linux kernel?

/* gets coat */

Wind River

[ackthpt]

This name rings a bell, what was their old name? Anyone know?

Re:Wind River

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Wind Breaks. It didn't catch on.

Re:Wind River

[sconeu]

Wind River is the VxWorks people, and I believe they also do a *BSD distro.

Re:Wind River

[Anonymous Coward]

Wind River is the original name (founded in 1989 or thereabouts, I believe.) You may be remembering one of the several companies it has acquired in the last five years--EST, Epilog, ISI, FTP, and ScopeTools come to mind.

What's the deal with Palm?

[joschm0]

If Palm is still planning a Linux PDA, why do I keep seeing news stories about Palm partnering with Microsoft? Do they plan to support both Linux and WinCE?

Re:What's the deal with Palm?

[AuMatar]

Why wouldn't they? There are N companies planning Linux pdas and M planning Windows CE ones. If they support both their potential customer base is N+M, instead of N or M. Unless N or M is small, it makes the most sense to keep the biggest pool.

Re:What's the deal with Palm?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to clear up some confusion, PalmOne(the hardware side of palm) are partnering with Microsoft,
PalmSource(the software side, makers of PalmOS) are converting to Linux.

Re:What's the deal with Palm?

[bfree]

Once upon a time there was one company called Palm. They split into two, a hardware company called PalmOne and a software company called PalmSource. Recently the hardware company bought the rights for the Palm name from the software company. Palm the hardware company seems to be bringing out a version of it's Treo palm/phone hybrid's running Windows. PalmSource on the other hand have declared that they are moving to a Linux kernel where the PalmOS as was will be implemented as a software stack on top of this. So the question is will Palm release any more hardware with the Palm software in the future or is this the start of them moving to being another windows oem?

Timesys in Pittsburgh

[drewzhrodague]

Timesys in Pittsburgh has been doing this for years, and I think they went carrier grade recently. I think they're having product/organization issues, and I don't approve of their hiring practices. But, good people working on good code -- what's left of them!

Buh-bye MontaVista!

[winkydink]

When will you learn that you need something to set you apart? Windriver has dev tools. Hear that sound? It's Windriver eating your lunch.

Re:Buh-bye MontaVista!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've worked with Windriver. They didn't meet the project requirements, and when we complained about buggy behaviour they claimed it was a missing feature rather than a bug.

Montavista on the other hand has some extremely experienced people and is heavily involved in the community.

Kinda late...

[strredwolf]

Wind River has always been working with Linux on embedded systems, or even with some odd embedded CPU's like PIC's. They have a free, open source Eclipse module for various systems.

It's all about the tools

[Wesley Felter]

All the embedded Linux companies have non-open-source tools and documentation; that's really what they're selling (since the kernel and userland are free).

Re:It's all about the tools

[dugenou]

...which is wrong : http://denx.de/

about time!

[real gumby]

WRS was one of Cygnus's early customers (starting 1990 or 1991) and, although they depended on the GNU development tools, used to make fun of the free software model and us in particular. Then they moved in the BSD direction and still made fun of the GPL. What a turn-around.

Re:about time!

[Anonymous Coward]

Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead; its corpse was then turned over to Wind River, where BSD failed again. Wind River end-of-lifed BSD several years ago. It truly is dead.

Re:about time!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is one example of why CEOs are paid lots of money.
I worked at Wind River in 2001-2002, when the company was hitting the skids. The stock price had plummeted, the company was showing a loss, the workforce shrank from ~2100 to ~950, and everybody had to take mandatory vacation days to save on the budget.
In 2003 the CEO, whose degree was in engineering but had mainly worked in sales, was fired, ahem, "left the company to pursue other opportunities." The new CEO (whose background was also mainly in sales) made one decision that I believe saved the company; certainly WR has turned around since then, the stock price rebounded, they've hired back lots of people, and the company is now showing a profit.
The decision was to move towards Linux. The old CEO (who I met on several occasions) was vehemently anti-Linux--so much so that if someone mentioned Linux at a meeting he would just ignore it, as if no one had spoken. The only time I heard him speak about it was a rant that Linux is really more expensive, because it eats up developers' time. (Whatever that means.)
The new CEO saw that the company was failing, so he decided to double up the product line--that is, for every product bundle the company put out for VxWorks, they would create an equivalent bundle for Linux. It was a lot of work, since it meant duplicating everything the company did, but so far it seems to have worked.

Developers Are Their Customers

[RichiP]

I agree that competition is good and is necessary in order for companies and their products to improve as best they can (not to mention more choices for consumers and lesser chances of price-fixing), both Wind River and Montavista should always be aware that they both have a responsibility to the developers who are their customers. The danger here is that bickering and fragmentations might paint a bleak landscape to developers and drive them towards Windows. It would be the Unix Wars all over again.

I believe that these two companies should develop and improve their products as best they can but always collude on making things easier for developers to share the same codebase. Since they're now working in an opensource environment, technical prowess in their engineers as well as great customer service are where they will be competing in. With equal access to source (assuming they release them), it would be in service satisfaction that would differentiate them most. If I were device manufacturer, I would more likely choose the company with the better team of engineers as well as customer service reps.

Re:Developers Are Their Customers

[OpalMirror]

There's little bickering at the open source community level between WR and MV -- the engineers and management teams believe in getting useful fixes back into community mainstream source, if for no other reason than to reduce the size of their patchsets they have to maintain, and because it's good for credibility and the community. MV and WR are going after the same customers, who want a common feature set. It's good for embedded application developer customers to have a choice of distros (MV, WR, TimeSys, roll-your-own), since each has different licensing, QA methodologies, chip vendor relationships, development services teams, toolchain and toolset support. In the end each embedded Linux distro vendor will have successes and the whole ecosystem of Linux embedded applications AND the open source community will thrive.

...Palm OS into a software stack for Linux...

[1tsm3]

I hate it when people use the word stack when the actually mean a module or a library!! Palm OS will probably run as a module+library combo.

Whoopie.

[n6kuy]

When is the Linux port of Tornado gonna be released?

In order to do VxWorks development with my Linux box, I had to build my own cross-compiler and copy all the target runtime libraries over.
Good thing I know how to compile on the command line and use Makefiles......

Re:Whoopie.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called Wind River Workbench these days, it's been available for Linux (primarily Red Hat) for about a year...

so what you are saying is...

[zogger]

......when it comes to Palms the companies, the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing?

Sounds like a GREAT US of A business plan!