We've already been discussing with the FSF how to phrase a declaration/guarantee that the eCos license stays as it is in principle (i.e. keeping the exception part). We just haven't agreed the final wording yet.
So it's open source - add them:-) Or pay someone else to add them. Unlike proprietary RTOS's, you can't get fleeced for even the smallest changes because Megacorp has the source code and you don't. Even if you want to pay someone else, you can't be charged silly prices like they sometimes do because you can always compare against how much it would cost you to do it yourself.
Since you've used eCos, you should already have seen how modular it is, and in particular you may have seen that it is designed to allow you to add new schedulers should you want.
What's more, being open source, it only takes one person or company to add them, or pay for them to be developed, and everyone can benefit and eCos moves forwards.
I'm not able to go into details, but be very very surprised in that case:-P.
The eCos copyright is zero value to Red Hat now, but it was valuable in 2002. A big reason it isn't now is because the eCos maintainers themselves have not assigned their code to Red Hat (even though other contributors have), and so the current source base is a mixture of Red Hat copyright and maintainer copyright code. As a result, Red Hat no longer really derives any benefit from being (part) copyright owners as they cannot unilaterally change the license. They could only change the license on their two year old source base for which they have full copyright.
The eCos maintainers will of course be assigning all their copyright to the FSF now.
By that token, libgcc is GPL incompatible, libstdc++ is GPL incompatible, Guile is GPL incompatible, etc. The whole point of the exceptions for those bits of GNU software, and for eCos, is to make it possible to write application code, without the GPL affecting that code.
To give some accurate background, the first eCos license was the CEPL - Cygnus eCos Public License. This was a Mozilla Public License derivative. Then Red Hat bought Cygnus and it became the RHEPL - the same license with the names changed, that's all.
Then not long before the eCos team left Red Hat, it was put under the current GPL+exception license.
With the Red Hat assignment to the FSF, we can now enforce the license much more easily, change the license if needed down the road (in case it was needed for legal reasons - it requires 100% agreement from all copyright holders), and there were a few contributors who were not prepared to make copyright assignments for their contributions to Red Hat, it being a commercial company, and especially when Red Hat no longer had any real interest in eCos. It also resolves a few hiccups with the copyright assignment process we had.
I think you need to read up more on eCos! To call eCos "prepackaged" is about as far from the truth as you can get. The big C in eCos stands for configurable, and it is far more configurable and customizable to your application than any Linux or BSD will ever be, and certainly QNX.
eCos is for the deeply embedded market, and embedded Linux, even in 2.6 is so much bigger. eCos systems start from just a few KB (~10KB I think I remember), and scale up from there as you use more features - using configuration, just exactly the features you want, and with the semantics you want. You get the choice.
Add to that that eCos is completely open source, and royalty free with no upfront costs either (although you do have the option of commercial support if you do want it), and you'll understand why eCos is so popular.
eCos supports many more targets and architectures than QNX too.
>The web site indecates new development as recent as
>September of last year.
Um, development has been ongoing, irrespective of Red Hat's loss of interest back at the start of 2002. There just hasn't been any big news since then. See the patch list for example.
The eCos maintainers (of which I'm one) have been pushing for a solution to the copyright issue for quite some time. It's good for everyone that Red Hat have donated eCos to the FSF.
> if you use just a fraction of the amount of power required to levitate the train > to push a wheeled one instead, the wheeled one goes a damn site faster
361mph beats the wheeled train record of 320mph by quite a margin. Not for the same power or cost, but if that were the be-all-and-end-all, we'd all be cycling.
>
All the information that could be gathered by this RFID system is
> public- the system can only record when a tag moves within a proximity
> of a reader. Given the limited read distance of contemporary readers,
> this information could more effectively be gathered by hiring people
> to write down the names of attendees as they enter a room.
> [snip]This article irresponsibly suggests that RFID inherently threatens privacy.
With contemporary readers, yes. With the way they seem to be taking off, how long will that last?
It would be like saying 15 years ago that mobile phones could never be the size they are today because the aerials and batteries would make them too big. Or that factoring RSA-576 would be infeasible in the near future.
Technology advancement often has a way of exceeding your expectations, and exceeding your fears.
A nice open-ended question: where do you see Red Hat and Linux in 5 years time? Or in other words, what do you predict the Linux world will be like then?
Imagine the insanity if all the code has to be re-licensed!
More than most people imagine. To change the GPL terms on the Linux kernel you have to get permission from every copyright holder. It simply wouldn't be possible.
The FSF are in a better position as they sensibly insist on copyright assignment from all contributors to FSF projects.
I don't understand why Google would even want an IPO. I mean, isn't the point of going public to get money to spend on advertisements in order to drive revenue?
Attracting investment might be important if Google wants to expand into horizontal markets. Google Linux anyone? Or how about Google pancake mix:-)
I've been working as a consultant for one of the top banks in the US for the last 10 years. [8<] We actively add elements and integrate third-party products with CygWin since it is the best at what it does.
Cool, an investment bank that uses GPL software in their main systems. Can you let the cygwin guys know (if you haven't already told them) as they'd probably be chuffed.
Red Hat posted a profit of 240,000 for the last quarter, the first profit EVER for a company mainly based on open-source software.
Nope, Cygnus Support (later Cygnus Solutions) was the first, albeit briefly, profitable open source company, or so I was told when I worked there. Red Hat later bought Cygnus and incompetently destroyed most of it, but that's a different story. But few people know that Cygnus was profitable on its balance sheet because it was a private, not public, company.
As for Apple, key parts of OS X (nothing earlier) are based on OSS, but that's not the same as the company being mainly based on OSS.
> Interesting. Redhat is trying to make everyone believe that their eCos thingy is actually some kind of Linux.
And Red Hat are the new MS no doubt:). No, actually Reuters screwed up. Here's the real press release. The Reuters report didn't even get the eCos URL right, so we had to set up a redirect.
All this happened because some dimwitted journalist somewhere had thought processes that went: "Duh, this is Red Hat so it must be Linux".
Slashdot Mirror
We've already been discussing with the FSF how to phrase a declaration/guarantee that the eCos license stays as it is in principle (i.e. keeping the exception part). We just haven't agreed the final wording yet.
:-).
So you can tell your friend not to worry
So it's open source - add them :-) Or pay someone else to add them. Unlike proprietary RTOS's, you can't get fleeced for even the smallest changes because Megacorp has the source code and you don't. Even if you want to pay someone else, you can't be charged silly prices like they sometimes do because you can always compare against how much it would cost you to do it yourself.
Since you've used eCos, you should already have seen how modular it is, and in particular you may have seen that it is designed to allow you to add new schedulers should you want.
What's more, being open source, it only takes one person or company to add them, or pay for them to be developed, and everyone can benefit and eCos moves forwards.
Sorry but you're wrong. (scroll down two screens or so)
This has been the license for coming up to 2 years now.
I'm not able to go into details, but be very very surprised in that case :-P.
The eCos copyright is zero value to Red Hat now, but it was valuable in 2002. A big reason it isn't now is because the eCos maintainers themselves have not assigned their code to Red Hat (even though other contributors have), and so the current source base is a mixture of Red Hat copyright and maintainer copyright code. As a result, Red Hat no longer really derives any benefit from being (part) copyright owners as they cannot unilaterally change the license. They could only change the license on their two year old source base for which they have full copyright.
The eCos maintainers will of course be assigning all their copyright to the FSF now.
By that token, libgcc is GPL incompatible, libstdc++ is GPL incompatible, Guile is GPL incompatible, etc. The whole point of the exceptions for those bits of GNU software, and for eCos, is to make it possible to write application code, without the GPL affecting that code.
To give some accurate background, the first eCos license was the CEPL - Cygnus eCos Public License. This was a Mozilla Public License derivative. Then Red Hat bought Cygnus and it became the RHEPL - the same license with the names changed, that's all.
Then not long before the eCos team left Red Hat, it was put under the current GPL+exception license.
With the Red Hat assignment to the FSF, we can now enforce the license much more easily, change the license if needed down the road (in case it was needed for legal reasons - it requires 100% agreement from all copyright holders), and there were a few contributors who were not prepared to make copyright assignments for their contributions to Red Hat, it being a commercial company, and especially when Red Hat no longer had any real interest in eCos. It also resolves a few hiccups with the copyright assignment process we had.
The same one as there is now.
[Uh oh! Advocacy war storm clouds gather]
I think you need to read up more on eCos! To call eCos "prepackaged" is about as far from the truth as you can get. The big C in eCos stands for configurable, and it is far more configurable and customizable to your application than any Linux or BSD will ever be, and certainly QNX.
eCos is for the deeply embedded market, and embedded Linux, even in 2.6 is so much bigger. eCos systems start from just a few KB (~10KB I think I remember), and scale up from there as you use more features - using configuration, just exactly the features you want, and with the semantics you want. You get the choice.
Add to that that eCos is completely open source, and royalty free with no upfront costs either (although you do have the option of commercial support if you do want it), and you'll understand why eCos is so popular.
eCos supports many more targets and architectures than QNX too.
>September of last year.
Um, development has been ongoing, irrespective of Red Hat's loss of interest back at the start of 2002. There just hasn't been any big news since then. See the patch list for example.
The eCos maintainers (of which I'm one) have been pushing for a solution to the copyright issue for quite some time. It's good for everyone that Red Hat have donated eCos to the FSF.
> if you use just a fraction of the amount of power required to levitate the train
> to push a wheeled one instead, the wheeled one goes a damn site faster
Well, the world train speed record is held by a maglev.
361mph beats the wheeled train record of 320mph by quite a margin. Not for the same power or cost, but if that were the be-all-and-end-all, we'd all be cycling.
With contemporary readers, yes. With the way they seem to be taking off, how long will that last?
It would be like saying 15 years ago that mobile phones could never be the size they are today because the aerials and batteries would make them too big. Or that factoring RSA-576 would be infeasible in the near future.
Technology advancement often has a way of exceeding your expectations, and exceeding your fears.
A nice open-ended question: where do you see Red Hat and Linux in 5 years time? Or in other words, what do you predict the Linux world will be like then?
Imagine the insanity if all the code has to be re-licensed!
More than most people imagine. To change the GPL terms on the Linux kernel you have to get permission from every copyright holder. It simply wouldn't be possible.
The FSF are in a better position as they sensibly insist on copyright assignment from all contributors to FSF projects.
I don't understand why Google would even want an IPO. I mean, isn't the point of going public to get money to spend on advertisements in order to drive revenue?
:-)
Attracting investment might be important if Google wants to expand into horizontal markets. Google Linux anyone? Or how about Google pancake mix
I've been working as a consultant for one of the top banks in the US for the last 10 years. [8<] We actively add elements and integrate third-party products with CygWin since it is the best at what it does.
Cool, an investment bank that uses GPL software in their main systems. Can you let the cygwin guys know (if you haven't already told them) as they'd probably be chuffed.
Red Hat posted a profit of 240,000 for the last quarter, the first profit EVER for a company mainly based on open-source software.
Nope, Cygnus Support (later Cygnus Solutions) was the first, albeit briefly, profitable open source company, or so I was told when I worked there. Red Hat later bought Cygnus and incompetently destroyed most of it, but that's a different story. But few people know that Cygnus was profitable on its balance sheet because it was a private, not public, company.
As for Apple, key parts of OS X (nothing earlier) are based on OSS, but that's not the same as the company being mainly based on OSS.
And Red Hat are the new MS no doubt :). No, actually Reuters screwed up. Here's the real press release. The Reuters report didn't even get the eCos URL right, so we had to set up a redirect.
All this happened because some dimwitted journalist somewhere had thought processes that went: "Duh, this is Red Hat so it must be Linux".
We have a FAQ entry for this issue even.
- Jifl (on the eCos team)