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LegOS - Open Source OS for Lego Mindstorms
An anonymous reader writes "While a Lego Mindstorms R2D2 might look cool, what OS is your robot going to run? Let me tell you, what it wants to run is LegOS. "
I can't find mindstorms anywhere around here. I want some
so bad its just sick. Especially those Star Wars Mindstorms.
Can anyone attest to the usability of LegOS? As soon as its good,
I'm just gonna have to bite the bullet and buy me some
Mindstorm.
I'm not sure I would call legOS open source. The license says:
"License to use, copy, modify and distribute this software in whole and in part is granted to all private and educational users, provided that they retain this copyright notice and offer the same licensing conditions for derived works."
It does seem to discriminate against commercial use which would make it non-OS.
The GPL does not restrict commercial use of the source code. This license, however, seems to do so. That restriction is not in compliance with the Open Source Definition.
From what I can tell the legOs developers does not claim it to be Open Source, it is the title of the slashdot article that does.
(Personally, I don't care if the whatever-mark Open Source is misused, but saying that something is OS implies that it is free software. From what I can see legOs is not free software.)
Rob, you need to get a Mindstorms kit, even if LegOS sucks bricks.
Just buy Mindstorms and find a copy of NQC and start having a blast.
I have had my Lego Mindstorm system for quite a while, and have tried out most of the Linux applications for it. I have to say that LegOS is by far the best thing out there. Anything that NQC wants to add, can be added into LegOS far easier. In addition, doing a lot more complex things in LegOS is possible.
I think I interpreted "private" differently from you. I interpret private to be persons and not companies, but maybe companies are to be included.
If that is the case, it does raise the question of "public users". What about government agencies? Is legOs available at all to them?
Since the license explicitly point out two groups it leads me to believe that the software is restricted to those of other groups. If it was truly free why not write "all users"?
Yeah its an open project. All the source is right there and its development has had several contributors.
Check out URL: http://www.multimania.com/legos/
and the zipped/gziped packages:
legOS-0.1.6.tgz or legOS-0.1.6.zip
for full source.
Newsgroup on www.lugnet.com has current colaborative discussion issues in newsgroup:
lugnet.robotics.rcx.legos
Enjoy!
Yes, it is nicer that there are more options. I would say that NQC would be fine for begginners, and LegOS would be for the people who really want to make their Mindstorms do everything that it possibly can. AFAIAC, LegOS is a far superior setup. In fact, it would probably be trivial to write a NQC->LegOS converter.
You should check out LUGnet (the newsgroups especially) and Lego Mindstorms Internals.
LUGnet, incidentally, runs on all open-source/Free software.
--
Last year Lego made a loss for the first time since it was founded in 1932, and now they're talking about a 10% cutback of the workforce. (See http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/the%5Fco mpany%5Ffile/newsid%5F259000/259803.stm)
Regards, Ralph.
LEGOS is OK, but NQC (Not Quite C) is the heart of it all.
It works, and is one heck of a lot better than the dumb software that comes with the kits.
As for getting a Mindstorms kit mine is for sale for $150.
maurice@harddata.com
Maurice W. Hilarius Voice: (778) 347-9907
It was recently reported on the lego-robotics list that the Mindstorms set is available at eToys for around 200 bucks.
Folks, the RCX has a whopping 32 kilobytes of external RAM. A programming language that uses a dynamic stack (to allow scoped variables, and true recursion-supporting function calls) would be a horrible waste of that RAM. It looks like you wouldn't even be able to port and run Interactive-C applications with this little primary storage. Take a good look at NQC, folks. It's really just BASIC made to look like C. The function calls are just figments of your imagination, they don't really exist, they are just spiffied-up GOTOs. As for an entire OS, you have got to be friggin *kidding* me!
What?? Not Linux??? Heretics!!! Burn them!
My French is a bit rusty but it looks like this page has been /.'ed out of existence. In under an hour too, not bad.
Is there another site for infon on LegOS?
If you're a Haskell fan, check out this Mindstorms page .