QNX "Opens" Source Code

Arista writes "QNX has announced that effective immediately, the company will open the source code to its QNX embedded, RTOS, microkernel operating system. From the press release: "Effective immediately, QNX will make source code for its award-winning, microkernel-based OS available for free download. The first source release includes the code to the QNX Neutrino microkernel, the base C library, and a variety of board support packages for popular embedded and computing hardware." OSNews features an interview with the CEO of QNX, Dan Dodge, on this announcement."

Comments

That's cool

[suso]

These are the guys that released that really cool Desktop GUI + PPP stack + web browser and OS on a single floppy disk back in the 90s. I remember also reading that the Photon GUI would let you pass applications between computers through a dock on the side of the screen. Neat stuff.

Re:That's cool

[hubert.lepicki]

Yes, these guys. But if you read not only the note that showed up on both osnews and slashdot, but the actual interview and if you download the source code - steps that I did - you will get different view ont whole "open source qnix" thing. It's "open source" only for non commercial use - which is not "open source" at all.

Re:That's cool

[porkThreeWays]

So a dual license? Blasphemy! I've never heard of a successful open source project using dual licensing!

Re:That's cool

[dougmc]

It's "open source" only for non commercial use - which is not "open source" at all.

Depends on which definition you use. Looks like the one you're using is more `free (libre) software' than `open source'.

To many, `open source' simply means the source is available. And it is.

Re:That's cool

[TheRaven64]

I've never heard of a successful open source project using dual licensing! From TFA:

We aren't releasing the OS code under an open source license. Dual licensing is fine, but none of them is open source. Also from TFA:

If fact, we're providing three licenses: one for commercial users, one for noncommercial users, and one for QNX technology partners. It's no different from Microsoft's Shared Source. None of the licenses counts as Free Software.

Re:That's cool

[Mr. Slippery]

To many, `open source' simply means the source is available.

"Open source" is a term of art with a very specific meaning.

Anyone in the software field, or any related field, who thinks that "open source simply means the source is available" is dangerously ignorant.

Re:That's cool

[harlows_monkeys]

It's no different from Microsoft's Shared Source. None of the licenses counts as Free Software.

Huh? One of Microsoft's Shared Source licenses (The Permissive License) satisfies every one of the conditions RMS gives for Free Software (and every condition given by OSI for Open Source).

Re:That's cool

[Hal_Porter]

And it's not possible that people disagree with your definition and use "open source" to mean "the source code is open"?

Re:That's cool

[dougmc]

"Open source" is a term of art with a very specific meaning That's one definition. Here is another. `Of or relating to source code that is available to the public'.

People redefining words to fit their agenda (for good or bad) is nothing new. And like it or not, the English language is ambiguous, and one word or phrase may mean different things to different people. And just because they use a definition that doesn't jive with the one you prefer, that doesn't mean they're `wrong'.

Anyone in the software field, or any related field, who thinks that "open source simply means the source is available" is dangerously ignorant. Anyone who speaks English but honestly thinks that words or phrases can only have one meaning is either 1) in denial or 2) doesn't really speak English.

Re:That's cool

[Hal_Porter]

It's not FUD. If they released QNX under the GPL3 they'd have allow people to pass on copies for free. So one person could buy a copy of QNX, set up a CVS server and then fork it as FreeQNX. So then potential users can then choose between paying QNX for software or downloading it for free from the FreeQNX server. What effect would that have on the price QNX can charge? Oh and they have to license their patents in a non discriminatory way too, so if they license the patents to the one person who pays, they need to license them to all the freeloaders too.

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html

Each contributor grants you a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free patent license under the contributor's essential patent claims, to make, use, sell, offer for sale, import and otherwise run, modify and propagate the contents of its contributor version.

These two things together make the GPL3 suicide for them.

Actually his objections to the GPL in an embedded world are exactly what I've been saying for ages. Especially this one -

To enable these activities, QNX intends to publish all of its runtime component source code (some source code wont be published immediately because of third-party licensing or confiden-tiality restrictions)

They can't open the source code completely, because they don't own all the rights.

And this too actually -

Technology companies implement their fundamental business strategies through licensing their intellectual property. It is a subtle task. If a company gives too much away through overly generous grants of copyrights or patents, then its competitors and customers get a "free ride" on its products; the company loses its incentive to invest in research and development.

If they followed the GPL, they don't get that return - anyone can take the software QNX paid to develop and use it for free. This is the situation that IP laws like copyrights and patents were invented to prevent - the idea is that you can invest money creating software and then license it to people because you know the law stops people who haven't paid from using it. If the software was public domain or GPLd, you can't do that - once people have the software they don't need you anymore and can decide not to pay.

You can say IP is a bad concept all you like, but it exists for a reason. In fact it exists so companies like QNX can exist.

Re:That's cool

[porkThreeWays]

Insightful? I was trying to be funny... =( I guess I'm gonna have to go back to prop comedy.

Re:That's cool

[ClosedSource]

It's funny that you describe the dominant and very successful business model for the software industry as "confused". Not every company wants to be in the consulting and contracts business and many customers aren't interested in paying for such services.

I have used proprietary embedded OS's before and we never would have paid for consulting services or maintenance contracts. If the OS's is of good quality and is reasonably well documented, what else would we need? However, if the OS was available for free for commercial use, we'd be happy to use it without paying for it (We wouldn't care much about having the source code: the whole point of buying it is to avoid doing the work ourselves). On the other hand, if it required us to release our code, we'd probably pass on it.

Re:That's cool

[Hal_Porter]

I explained why they can't release the software as GPL and continue to sell licenses which is what they want to. I find it amazing that people with absolutely no experience of running a software business can tell people that do that if they give their software away they can still make money from "custom development workd and maintainance contracts". I think QNX knows more about whether that's possible or not than you do.

Instead they're chosing to try and hold on to a confused business model where they try to fool themselves and their customers into believing that the customers have to pay for the software.

That's hilarious. So you say their business model is "confused" because they "try to fool themselves and their customers into believing that the customers have to pay for the software". That actually sounds like the definition of a good business model to me - sell licenses for a fee.

Whereas in your business model they stop doing that and somehow karma will make sure they still get money from other things.

Seriously, I don't know how you can say that their business model is confused without seeing the irony.

Maybe you should try the same argument next time you see something you like in a shop. Tell the assistant that their business model is confused and outdated and they should give it to you for free and then make money out of a maintainance contract. Maybe you'll get some free stuff.

Incidentally, how much money have you spent on maintainance contracts for free software? Personally, I've spent exactly $0 over my entire life. I have paid a few thousand dollars for commercial software I like though. So if I'm typical, I'd say people people who want to go on selling licensed are onto a good thing and should ignore people like you trying to trick them into giving away their stuff. But I'm sure they're smart enough to know that anyway, just like this QNX guy does.

Re:That's cool

[Mr. Slippery]

That's one definition. Here is another. `Of or relating to source code that is available to the public'.

And the American Heritage dictionary is supposed to be authoritative about software development and licensing?

Look up "trusted" in a dictionary and you won't find mention of the Orange Book or Common Criteria, but you'd better understand their definitions if you're going to talk about "trust" in a computer system.

Yes, natural language is ambiguous; one of the ways ambiguity is resolved is via context. "Work" means one thing when I'm talking about my paycheck, another if I'm talking about physics. If I said I get paid for my work on such-and-such-project and you asked how much force I exerted over what distance, you'd either be joking or you'd be dangerously confused.

"Open source", in the context of software development and licensing, is ambiguous only as a convenience for those who wish to create confusion and either sabotage, or ride the coat-tails of, the Open Source movement.

Voting machines

[goombah99]

This is huge news. One of the most popular paper ballot systems, the ES&S model 100 optical scan runs on QNX. this means it is now theoretically possible that ES&S could go open source if they wanted to.

Re:Voting machines

[squiggleslash]

Not unless they switch from QNX. QNX is not going open source, it's a shared source scheme (specifically, commercial use requires payment.)

Re:Voting machines

[friedman101]

They already did, here's a snippet

int maxDonation=0;
int bestCandidate=0;
for (int a =0; a<= numCandidates-1; a++) {
if (candidates[a].donation > maxDonation) {
maxDonation = candidates[a].donation;
bestCandidate = a;
}
}

candidates[a].CastVote();

Re:Voting machines

[rar]

int maxDonation=0;
int bestCandidate=0;
for (int a =0; a<= numCandidates-1; a++) {
if (candidates[a].donation > maxDonation) {
maxDonation = candidates[a].donation;
bestCandidate = a;
}
}
 
candidates[a].CastVote();

Not only corrupt, but also buggy. It always casts the vote for the last guy + 1, overflowing the candidates array. Apparently the last defense of democracy is that people code like crap.

Microkernel? WTF?!

[crush]

Don't they know that it's standard wisdom on Slashdot that microkernels can't work? What's wrong with these guys?!!! Myself, I'm still waiting for GNU/Hurd :)

Excellent news

[dargaud]

QNX has some of the best real-time features of any OS and its message passing architecture is reliable and pretty simple to use. The main problem so far was its price, lack of source and overall lack of applications. This will likely change quickly if it is open-sourced. I can see it become a serious contender to the various complex and poorly documented patches to turn Linux into a real-time system. Excellent news indeed.

Re:Under what license

[betterunixthanunix]

TFA:

" under a new hybrid software licensing arrangement. "

And:

" Access to QNX source code is free, but commercial deployments of QNX Neutrino runtime components still require royalties, and commercial developers will continue to pay for QNX Momentics® development seats. "

(Hint: It's definitely not GPL)

Re:Microkernel? WTF?!

[Spy der Mann]

Myself, I'm still waiting for GNU/Hurd

Oh right, I heard Duke Nukem forever requires it.

Source Available, NOT Open Source

[Russ Nelson]

Sheesh, this is no better than Microsoft's "Shared Source"! They restrict commercial development, just like Microsoft.

This is Source Available software, NOT Open Source Software. You don't have all the freedoms available to you that are described by the Open Source Definition.

They're being demolished by linux

[xtal]

I've done a few embedded linux projects over the years - we would have loved to run QNX, as I was exposed to it in university and enjoyed it, very robust, supported etc - but the licensing fees are killer. The offered advantages, at least in the applications we've worked in make it a no brainer to go embedded linux.


Access to QNX source code is free, but commercial deployments of QNX Neutrino runtime components still require royalties, and commercial developers will continue to pay for QNX Momentics® development seats.

Looks like I'll be keeping my investment in embedded linux environments. Royalty vs. no royalty with same functionality, I'll tell you who wins every time. Linux keeps getting better, too.

It's time to talk about "free software"... *again*

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

The title of the press release is "QNX Publishes Neutrino Source Code and Opens Development Process". Arista, on the other hand, didn't seem to mind mangling this in order to get this article posted to Slashdot.

I imagine this kind of thing might be why Bruce Perens said way back in 1999 that it's time to talk about "free software" again.

Re:Microkernel? WTF?!

[LWATCDR]

I know that you are being funny but if you want to work on a FOSS microkernel system take a look at this.

Minix 3

It looks very interesting to me.

It's "shared", not "opened".

[darkonc]

Don't drink the PR Cool-Aid(tm) boys. Distinguish this PR hype from reality and call it what it really is -- "Shared Source". It's not Open Source(tm), and it's not "Free".

You need licenses to do things like release your own version, and that puts it in the same ballpark as Microsoft's shared source initiative.

Frustrating: QNX

[fm6]

I find the history of QNX very frustrating. When I first heard of it in the mid 80s, it was advertised as a simple Unix-like OS with very low hardware requirements. It was network-aware, supported distributed computing, and had a nice microkernel architecture.

But the most important thing was that it was a real OS, with the ability to multitask and to effectively isolate hardware from software. Contrast this with MS-DOS 3.0, which had only the most primitve, kludgy excuse for background processing. (Patterson knew zilch about os design when he set out to clone CP/M; it never occurred to him that OS code needed to be reentrant. And MS-DOS did a really lousy job of isolating hardware from software. Ironically, this fuckup assured lockin of the IBM-compatible/PC combination: software written for this platform was essential impossible to port to other platforms.

What was particularly tantalizing was that QNX claimed to run well even on very limited hardware — even 8088 systems were said to run robustly. And it shared some key features with CTOS an first-rate OS that was then dying off, due to its dependence on proprietary hardware.

The problem with QNX was that commercial license fees were very high; that's why I never played with it. It did become popular at universities (cheap academic licenses) and among certain kinds of embedded application developers (because of its nice feature set and minimal hardware requirements. I'm told that by the late 80s, most video stores used POS systems based on QNX.

Then MS-DOS/Windows started grabbing more and more of the market and QNX was forced to specialize. So for a long time now they've advertised themselves as a real-time operating system. And yes, their real-time features are very good — but they're just one part of a really good general-purpose OS.

Now, much too late to do me any good, there's an open-source version of QNX. I wish the QNX OSS community well, but there's just no place for it in the world I work in. Hopefully, embedded application developers will keep QNX alive. But I'll always be sad that QNX never found a following among common PC users — which it surely would have if the marketplace were driven by technical excellence instead of various sordid realities. This is one of the great lost opportunities in computing history. And should be a lesson to Linux advocates who think they can easily displace Microsoft.

Re:Frustrating: QNX

[eric76]

There's a story about QNX I came across a few years ago.

It seems that some factory was using QNX to control a very important industrial robot. QNX had been installed and had run without flaw for a couple of years or more since it had been installed.

One fine November day, the consultant or contractor who handled that system among others was told that it had quit logging events a few months earlier. The consultant checked on it and found that the disk drive had failed the previous August.

Re:Non-free licence means minor event

[davonshire]

I disagree.
    Opening the source means people who could never afford to work with and learn this vital and amazing operating system, will have a real chance now. Just because it's not GPL'd doesn't mean this chance isn't a really good thing for people who want to program. Want to earn a living writing good software for something an industry needs and uses.

    If more companies would do things like this with their products. I think you would see a great deal more enhancements and improvements in peoples ability to find employment and enhance their skills.

    Take for example Blender3D. It's the little linux that could of the 3D CGI world. It has made amazing strides since it was purchased and it's source opened for the 3D and programming community. There you have OPEN Source. But still most major companies are using 3D Studio, Maya, Autodesk etc to make movies, commercials etc. None of who have a full version for hobbiests to use and build their talents on. While some may have education versions, most of them fall far shy of a full system so you learn how to do physics, and full lighting, cloth and hair for characters etc.

    Without the chance to really play with all the bells and whistles you can't fully explore what something can do for you. And while you may build small animations they are heavily watermarked with 'Made with Bladiblah 3D trial version' etc.

    I'm all for Free software and open source. But I'd never devalue the contribution of an effort like this.

Thank you for your patience.

in other words

[josepha48]

QNX is not doing as well as they would like, so they think they can capitalize on open source and maybe take advantage of those who are afraid of the GPL v3.

Yeah that may sound trollish, but there are several companies that are doing the open source thing because they are not doing so well.

I'm not saying this is a bad thing, I'm just saying QNX is not doing as well as I think they would like to.

Re:Microkernel? WTF?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me know when Minix actually supports virtual memory pages. Last I looked it was using segments, which aside from being clumsy, aren't very portable. There are plenty of other more innovative OS's that are much further along than Minix. You could do worse than to look at L4 and Coyotos. You could also do worse than to look at Minix, certainly, but just don't stop there.

Re:Microkernel? WTF?!

[cerberusss]

Myself, I'm still waiting for GNU/Hurd

Oh right, I heard Duke Nukem forever requires it.

No, the Duke box will actually say "GNU/Hurd or better". That's why I installed Vista.

They have bills to pay too

[OrangeTide]

Well they do make most of their money off royalties and annual dev kits fees. I think the idea is to get QNX into the academic arena, where you can warp the minds of future engineers and pick up some market share.

Re:Use It for Linux

[squiggleslash]

Nope, QNX is not going to be Free Software, let alone licensed under anything compatible with the GPL. It will be an infringement of the copyrights of both Linux and QNX to incorporate one's code into the other.

Calling the kettle black?

[ClosedSource]

"And this is why Free Software advocates laugh at people who say 'Open Source' is not ambiguous."

RMS is the king of ambiguity. That's why the phrases "free as in free" and "free as in beer" had to be invented. It should have been called "Freedom Software", but that doesn't have quite the marketing value that "Free Software" does.

Re:Calling the kettle black?

[Curtman]

but that doesn't have quite the marketing value that "Free Software" does.

That would be a good thing. "Free Software" still has a stigma associated with "shareware" and other useless crap. Whenever you mention free software to people not familiar with it, it immediately puts you on the defensive about its quality. Most people seem to glaze over when having the free as in freedom discussion. Open source may mean a different thing, but people respond to it much better than free software.

Not a surprise

[gnalre]

This is not a surprise really. VxWorks the other big embedded OS opened it source a couple of years ago. This was not long after listening to the CEO of Vxworks telling us the vxworks source code was the crown jewels. Well some crown jewels that was.

The truth is all embedded OS have been forced to do this by the rise of linux in the embedded world. Also believe me the difference is huge when you have the source. Wierd behavior and unexplained bugs suddenly become transparent when you can dig into the source. In the end though it doesn't really hurt the vendor since you still pay them for support and development tools.