BlackBerry Maker To Buy QNX For RTOS & Dev. Suite

Freshly Exhumed writes "Research In Motion, maker of BlackBerry smartphones, said on Friday it will buy QNX Software Systems, makers of Real-Time Operating Systems, for an undisclosed amount as it moves to boost integration of its devices with in-vehicle audio systems. QNX Neutrino is a Unix-like RTOS, and their Momentics development suite is for embedded applications for a wide variety of industries. While RIM has offered somewhat limited support of open source projects on its BlackBerry platform, the future of QNX's Foundry27 development project, which uses the Apache 2.0 license, has not yet been mentioned."

Comments

Please don't fuck this up, RIM

[the linux geek]

QNX is quite possibly the best operating system available. The tools are great, and the OS itself can do some pretty ridiculous things. To start with, it's extremely fast - even with the Photon GUI (another great feature) loaded, it only consumes something like 25MB of RAM on x86, and slightly less on ARM. That's impressive. Then let's go into the clustering features - if they're turned on, then processes are automatically and transparently distributed among any QNX machines on the local network.

On the other hand, I haven't been that impressed with the way QNX Systems has been handling the platform lately. Momentics can't even self-host anymore, and the UI has gotten a lot worse in my opinion. That being said, I hope RIM doesn't do an IBM-style acquisition where they just take the bits of the victim company that they like and kill everything else.

Re:Please don't fuck this up, RIM

[Tapewolf]

Absolutely. AFAIK this thing is so rock-solid that it's used for safety-critical things like medical equipment and aerospace stuff. I absolutely do not want to see it go down the pan, even though I don't use it myself.

Re:Please don't fuck this up, RIM

[RAMMS EIN]

I second the sentiment that QNX is a great operating system. My first contact with it was through the incredible 1.44 MB QNX Demo Disk, which was a bootable 1.44 MB diskette image containing QNX (4.something, I think), with GUI and graphical web browser. Did I mention that the OS was POSIX-compliant and real-time? At the time, Linux and XFree86 absolutely paled in comparison.

While on the topic, I would like to say that I would like to have a desktop OS that provided real-time guarantees (or at least "most of the time"). On my shiny multi-GHz, multi-core, multi-GB-of-RAM machine, Firefox still manages to hang the user interface for multiple seconds when it first starts up and I type something it the Awesome bar. I'd like to at least be able to switch windows and start sending input to another application in = 0.1 seconds! If we could extend the real-time guarantees to a GUI library so that we could have, say, button click animations and other "I got your message and I'm working on it" feedback to respond within certain time frames, that would be great.

A nice lightweight OS

[shutdown -p now]

Last time I played with QNX, I was impressed with how light-weight it is. I understand that it's an embedded OS, but nonetheless you can run it on the desktop, and the UI is extremely fast. I wonder why it isn't used in the same role as those lightweight Linux distros, as a desktop for older systems.

It also has some rather neat APIs of its own, especially those responsible for UI ("Photon").

By the way, if you ever wanted to play with it, it is freely downloadable (yes, that is the x86 version, so it'll run on your desktop).

Re:A nice lightweight OS

[shutdown -p now]

Oh yes, you'll also need a key for non-commercial use - this can be obtained here, though they require you to register with them.

RIM Gearing Up To FIGHT Apple!

[itsybitsy]

RIM has finally stepped up to the plate to FIGHT the GOOD against APPLE! YES!

Although I hate to see QNX be owned by RIM, the people who brought us Blackberry (recently completed a blackberry app - icky sticky java with types getting stuck all over the place for no good reason), this is a major massive move by RIM that sets them on the board to fight Apple. Before now it was not even a fair match. Now at least RIM has a chance again.

QNX? Memories

[houghi]

Internet on a floppy. Brought me a lot of fun. Boot the floppy, connect and surf away.

Re:UNIX-like?

[MobyTurbo]

QNX is a bit more Unix-like than Symbian or OpenVMS or WinNT. It's userland is Unix, with a bash shell, GNU utilities, and so on. So from both an API level, and a user interface level, it's Unix-like.

Now, if you define Unix as "has X11 as its main GUI", you'd have to define such Unixes as early SunOS (using NeWS) as non-Unix, and define OS X as non-Unix when it is Unix(r) certified, while such clones as Linux get called Unix...

You are right of course that a real time Microkernel is not the typical kernel on a Unix operating system, but then again, several Unixes were made with microkernels, especially the CMU Mach variety which powered the Unix known as OSF/1, which had a Unix vendor of none other than Digital Equipment (eventually it got named to Tru64, and is still in production by HP after the Compaq merger). Real time variations on Unix have a long history, AT&T even made one. Maybe your definition of the Unix kernel is "something that resembles the 4BSD kernel", mostly because that's what Linux resembles best, but it would be in variance with the certification authorities' definition, which is API, or the common user's definition, which would be what the userland resembles.

Re:UNIX-like?

[MobyTurbo]

So are the OpenVMS, Windows, and Symbian POSIX layers. Are these operating systems also UNIX-like n your book?

I've never seen anyone use a BASH shell on OpenVMS, fork() on Windows, or anything Unixy other than Qt on Symbian. QNX, on the other hand, is regularly programmed with the Unix API and has a Unix userland as its primary command line interface.

OS source access is already blocked

[the_doctor_23]

Looks like Foundry27 is being canned:

Effective April 9th 2010, QNX Software Systems has updated its source code access policy. This FAQ has been prepared for customers, partners, and hobbyists and provides details on what has changed.
Q. What has changed under the new source code policy?

Under the new policy, QNX Software Systems will continue to make its proprietary OS and middleware source code available to qualified customers, partners, and educational institutions. However, some of this code will no longer be available to hobbyists or to the general public.

The new policy classifies proprietary QNX source code as either Open (available to anyone under an open source license), Accessible (available to customers, partners, educational institutions, and hobbyists under a new click-through agreement), or Restricted (available to customers and partners with an approved QNX Restricted Content Application).

For example, QNX Software Systems will:

* continue to provide board support packages (BSPs) as open source
* provide various libraries and utilities as Accessible source
* provide source code for the QNX microkernel as Restricted source

Does anyone have a torrent with the current source?

UW

[jpmorgan]

Interestingly enough, QNX and RIM are both University of Waterloo semi-spinoffs.

Replacement phone OS?

[idiot900]

Does this mean there will be a new kernel for the phones, and a POSIX userland API exposed to developers? This announcement, combined with previous noises about Flash on BlackBerry, make me suspect so. RIM's JVM and apps are still cripplingly slow when compared to the pizzazz-filled user experience of the iPhone...

Dont follow Palm

[CdBee]

QNX Neutrino I remember as a very promising OS, released for x86 desktop-class computers as a distribution that fitted a web browser, ppp, windowing environment and enough drivers to work as a prototype 'live distro', booting from A SINGLE 1.44MB FLOPPY DISK

I spent many hours playing with it on a Dell pentium 133/32mb laptop. when Palm bought BeOS for its software assets hardly any were ever used. I hope RIM does better. they could make excellent products with an OS that light but powerful.

Re:UNIX-like?

[Rysc]

fork() on Windows>/quote>
Worked fine for me under the POSIX layer I was using (cygwin) when I last had a Windows machine (around 2003, running Win2K).

If cygwin makes Windows Unix then Wine makes Linux Windows.