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Operating Systems Software

QNX "Opens" Source Code 232

Posted by CmdrTaco from the does-anybody-even-use-qnx-anyway dept.
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."
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QNX "Opens" Source Code More

QNX "Opens" Source Code

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  • That's cool (Score:5, Informative)

    by suso ( 153703 ) * on Wednesday September 12, 2007 @10:07AM (#20573049) Journal
    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: (Score:2, Informative)

      by hubert.lepicki ( 1119397 )
      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 (Score:5, Funny)

        by porkThreeWays ( 895269 ) on Wednesday September 12, 2007 @10:15AM (#20573223)
        So a dual license? Blasphemy! I've never heard of a successful open source project using dual licensing!

        • Re:That's cool (Score:5, Informative)

          by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Wednesday September 12, 2007 @10:24AM (#20573365) Journal

          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: (Score:3, Informative)

            by harlows_monkeys ( 106428 )

            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 (Score:4, Insightful)

          by porkThreeWays ( 895269 ) on Wednesday September 12, 2007 @01:05PM (#20576377)
          Insightful? I was trying to be funny... =( I guess I'm gonna have to go back to prop comedy.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by oglueck ( 235089 )
          I've never heard of a successful open source project using dual licensing!

          You must have heard of MySQL.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by bytesex ( 112972 )
          Exacly. BerkeleyDB is one of the very pillars of the open source industry, and it comes with exactly such a license. Don't like it ? Yield some of the power you desire and use GDBM instead.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by dougmc ( 70836 )

        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: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Mr. Slippery ( 47854 )

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

          "Open source" is a term of art with a very specific meaning [opensource.org].

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

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Hal_Porter ( 817932 )
            And it's not possible that people disagree with your definition and use "open source" to mean "the source code is open"?
            • And this is why Free Software advocates laugh at people who say 'Open Source' is not ambiguous. The term 'open' has been used to describe a wide variety of things. Long before we had Open Source, we had OpenVMS, which was 'open' in that it completely implemented POSIX.
              • "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: (Score:3, Informative)

                  by Curtman ( 556920 )

                  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.

          • Re:That's cool (Score:5, Insightful)

            by dougmc ( 70836 ) <dougmc+slashdot@frenzied.us> on Wednesday September 12, 2007 @12:12PM (#20575381) Homepage

            "Open source" is a term of art with a very specific meaning [opensource.org]
            That's one definition. Here [answers.com] 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: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by Mr. Slippery ( 47854 )

              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 cont

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by crush ( 19364 )
        Yes, it's interesting that Larry Rosen is busy spreading FUD [qnx.com] when he claims stuff like: Open Source licenses ... relinquish[..] all control over their intellectual property and giving it away for free (pg.2) or counterpoises OSS with ... the sustainability of a royalty-based business model for commercial projects {pg.2) A lawyer involved with licensing issues should be very aware that Intellectual Property [fsf.org] is a garbage, meaningless term usually used by people that are seeking to assert greater control o

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by Hal_Porter ( 817932 )
          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 n

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by crush ( 19364 )

            It's not FUD.

            Sure it is. It states that "Open Sourcing" will lead to a non-sustainable, non-commercial business. That's contention is pure FUD. I gave at least two major examples that disprove that contention. The company behind QNX would be in a prime position to derive revenue from custom development work and maintenance contracts from hardware manufacturers. 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

            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by ClosedSource ( 238333 )
              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 f

            • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

              by Hal_Porter ( 817932 )
              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 t

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by crush ( 19364 )

                That actually sounds like the definition of a good business model to me - sell licenses for a fee.
                Incidentally, how much money have you spent on maintainance contracts for free software?

                Per annum we spend approximately $20,000 on a mix of RHEL base 12/5 and 24/7 supported systems. It's worth it. We used to spend more on VMWare, but luckily that's not happening anymore and we're using Xen.

                Maybe you should try the same argument next time you see something you like in a shop.

                Oh. OK. You really are

          • The "IP" laws like copyright and patent were invented for one reason: "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;"

            There are not there to encourage profit per se. They exist to encourage invention. The problem today is that, for copyright, the work essentially never reaches the public domain. Congress continues to extend the duration of copyright (under intense lobbying by

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by abes ( 82351 )
        Actually, it is open source software regardless. The open source refers to the fact that the source is open for all to read. It has no implications of freedom. Freedom is only guaranteed with Free Software (or sometimes FOSS). The Free of course refers to your freedom to do what you want with it.
        • When you're forced to commit the etymological fallacy to back up your argument, it's a tacit admission that your argument has collapsed.
      • 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.
        • You don't have to have your mind warped to see that QNX is a superb design. You do need it warped to want to tie your company's commercial future to a small proprietary software vendor with no second source. It's the business students minds the need to be warping, not the engineers.
          • "You do need it warped to want to tie your company's commercial future to a small proprietary software vendor with no second source."

            What are you saying? IF QNX goes out of business your binaries explode? In an embedded system, the software is the least of your "sourcing" issues. Besides, in the embedded market you shouldn't be tying your company's future to anything beyond your current products. If, for example, you say "We'll be using Linux in our products from now on", you're asking for trouble.
    • Yep this was the first *nix I ever used, from a single floppy on my Amiga :D

  • Voting machines (Score:5, Interesting)

    by goombah99 ( 560566 ) on Wednesday September 12, 2007 @10:08AM (#20573065)
    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: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Chyeld ( 713439 )
      They are "Opening the source" but not going open source. Basically if you are non-commercial (i.e. academic or amateur) you can get a free license to play around with the code, but if you are commercial then you have to pay.

      This is more like one of Microsoft's aborted attempts at opening source, where they'll let you have access as long as you don't do anything they might have wanted to do or competes in anyway with them.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by friedman101 ( 618627 )
      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();

      • for (int a =0; a<= numCandidates-1; a++) {
        Interesting... most people would just write:

          for (int a=0; a < numCandidates; a++) {

        but I guess that's what makes the code so funny.
         

      • Re:Voting machines (Score:5, Funny)

        by rar ( 110454 ) on Wednesday September 12, 2007 @11:50AM (#20574981) Homepage

        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.

        • "Not only corrupt, but also buggy. It always casts the vote for the last guy + 1, overflowing the candidates array."
          Since we're nitpicking, it actually won't compile at all because the variable "a" has gone out of scope on the last line.

          God, I hate myself sometimes.

  • Microkernel? WTF?! (Score:5, Funny)

    by crush ( 19364 ) on Wednesday September 12, 2007 @10:08AM (#20573069)
    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 :)
    • Myself, I'm still waiting for GNU/Hurd

      Oh right, I heard Duke Nukem forever requires it.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by LWATCDR ( 28044 )
      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 [minix3.org]

      It looks very interesting to me.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by 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.

        • It's not just unportable outside the x86 family, x86-64 doesn't support segmented addressing, so MINIX 3 will always be a 32-bit OS. For something that's designed as a teaching OS, it has some horrendously unreadable code. Linux is the only kernel I've seen that's worse.

          L4 is not a kernel, it's a specification. There are a few nice implementations, but synchronous message passing is just a bad idea. It gives you the worst of both worlds.

          I haven't been following Coyotos much since it stopped being E

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fm6 ( 162816 )
      I think you've got it backwards. Everyone here is a believer in RMS and RMS is a believer in microkernels. Ergo, microkernels are kewl.

      Perhaps you're thinking of the Tanenbaum-Torvalds flamefest [wikipedia.org], where Tanenbaum argued that the Linux kernel was obsolete from day 1, because it was monolithic. So if you believe that Linus is God (or at least the Flying Spaghetti Monster), then you hate microkernels. On the other hand, monolithic kernels are old technology and microkernels are (relatively) new technology; so n

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by crush ( 19364 )
        Nah, round here everyone is a dirty, MacOSX-using, dope-smoking, "web designer" slacker.

  • Excellent news (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dargaud ( 518470 ) <slashdot2@gd a r gaud.net> on Wednesday September 12, 2007 @10:10AM (#20573115) Homepage
    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.
    • I agree. QNX has the most elegant design of any kernel I've seen. Unfortunately, it's not being open sourced. The source will be available, but not under a license compatible with the OSI's Open Source definition or the FSF's four freedoms.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dargaud ( 518470 )
        I knew there must have been a catch in there. Hah, back to reading Hallinan's Embedded Linux Primer...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mi ( 197448 )

        The source will be available, but not under a license compatible with the OSI's Open Source definition or the FSF's four freedoms.

        I would like to know, what it is, that you (or someone you know) are currently doing with a "truly free" OS, that you will not be able to do with the QNX now.

        Please, advise.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hawk ( 1151 )
        So it's free as in speech, not beer :)

        hawk

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tyger ( 126248 )
        If you read some of the source, the elegance is retained there. A company I used to work at had a full license to the source of QNX, including Neutrino which, at the time, was rare. Of all the licensed commercial sources I've worked with, QNX was the only one I could say was a pleasure to work with. Most feel about as pleasurable to work with as a root canal. For a project of the size, it's actually very well organized and written.

        It's just a shame it's not a full open source.
    • "... and overall lack of applications."

      It's an embedded OS: It's your job to write the application.
  • I've been trying to get the non-commercial key from them for Momentics, but it doesn't seem like they plan on sending it to me anytime soon. Anyone else having any luck?

  • Source Available, NOT Open Source (Score:3, Informative)

    by Russ Nelson ( 33911 ) <slashdot@russnelson.com> on Wednesday September 12, 2007 @10:25AM (#20573381) Homepage
    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 (Score:4, Insightful)

    by xtal ( 49134 ) on Wednesday September 12, 2007 @10:25AM (#20573385)
    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.

  • Its good news for me. I played around with QNX (around v6.1 I think) and was really impressed by the speed it could run on older machines. If I had a single CD install that could browse files, play MPS and run firefix then I would install in without a seconds thought. I remember being vaguely unimpressed with the license and installing Mandrake instead (hey, it was a few years ago..)

    For a fuller office experience Ubuntu would win because of the application support, but for simple client Net/Music use in

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Locutus ( 9039 )
      what's wrong with Damn Small Linux( DSL ) for that task? You did say CD, so is 50MB still too much for ya.

      Also, head over to rPath and see what you can build yourself. Heck, I've even seen OS/2 stripped down to a 10MB partition and 8MB of RAM doing GUI networking, email and web browsing. Dump X and you could probably do close to the same with Linux though a full featured browser is going to take more than 8MB itself.

      LoB
      • Speed (specifically RAM consumption on an older machine). DSL is decent but QNX is tiny. The difference on a real old-school pentium is noticeable, and I can keep my GUI with QNX.

        Remember kiddies, right tool for the job. Most of the time its Linux. Sometimes it is not.
        • Damn straight.

          There's a generation of hardware out there that doesn't run well with any OS beyond Win95, BeOS, or QNX.

          Were I tasked with making a bunch of first-gen Pentium machines into internet/multimedia kiosks, my first action would be to try to get some licenses for BeOS (assuming the things needed to be 100% legal), and if that didn't work then I'd try QNX. BSD or some kind of optimized Linux with a light GUI would only be used if the other two didn't pan out, because they just can't compete performa

  • It's time to talk about "free software"... *again* (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Schraegstrichpunkt ( 931443 ) on Wednesday September 12, 2007 @10:28AM (#20573445) Homepage

    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 [debian.org].

  • It's "shared", not "opened". (Score:4, Informative)

    by darkonc ( 47285 ) <stephen_samuel&bcgreen,com> on Wednesday September 12, 2007 @10:45AM (#20573727) Homepage Journal
    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.

  • I used to program it when it wasn't a POSIX compliant kernel but some weird ass vaguely Unix-like thing. The compiler was terrible, the tools were terrible, the OpenLook-like UI was terrible but it was still a lot more liberating than programming Windows or DOS. You could do some very whacky things since it didn't really matter too much if you were talking to a process or filesystem on your own machine or somewhere else on a token ring. The real time and multitasking performance was generally excellent. I r
  • QNX has a viable business model just selling the test suite and certification package for the OS, without selling the OS package itself (although they will still make a killing licensing it for commercial use). They have an established base of customers in the embedded systems market who need to prove to regulatory bodies that the OS will do what it claims to do - and these documents would be worth every penny. This is an excellent way to take advantage of open source licensing.

  • Frustrating: QNX (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Wednesday September 12, 2007 @10:53AM (#20573879) Homepage Journal
    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 [wikipedia.org]. 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 [wikipedia.org] 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.
    • If you hooked a terminate-stay-resident program onto the clock interrupt and used that to page programs in and out, the same way the 4DOS program paged in/out applications on a keystroke, you could have limited multitasking on DOS. However, as noted, nothing was protected, so essentially nothing was safe, but it was possible to use this sort of technique to reduce the limitations of DOS.
    • "I find the history of QNX very frustrating"

      I find your history of QNX very puzzling. MS-DOS and QNX were never really competitors since they were really in different markets.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by renoX ( 11677 )
      Funny you said:
      [[The problem with QNX was that commercial license fees were very high; that's why I never played with it.]]
      and
      [[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.]]

      Sordid realities like price maybe?
      Due! Microsoft has it right: start with a low cost OS, grabe a huge marketshare and *then* you can increase the price and getting huge profits!

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by eric76 ( 679787 )
      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.

  • in other words (Score:4, Interesting)

    by josepha48 ( 13953 ) on Wednesday September 12, 2007 @11:16AM (#20574317) Journal
    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.

  • Cool, that was the one thing that was missing in the past with the free version. All i ever found was ix86. Anything else was $.
  • Now Linux kernel developers can use code from QNX to make a RTOS that runs Linux apps and the smaller (but still valuable) library of QNX apps. And maybe port Linux (or the new combo) to HW that now runs QNX but not Linux.

    It comes too late to finally get Linux working on the Geode-based 3Com "Ergo Audrey" [wikipedia.org] I had such hopes for. But the HW was already obsolete. Maybe now a QNX/Linux OS will get such a promising "home GUI" to work with all the apps that would make it such a neat terminal.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • I'm not really into the OS business, but I'd suppose QNX and linux were written in entirely different architectures -- one is a microkernel and the other is pretty much based on a monolithic model. Code that works perfectly on a microkernel might not make sense on a monolithic kernel such as Linux, at least without significant changes.

      It's not like you can trivially "copy" over some magic code and make an OS more "real time". Just as you couldn't copy over any code that makes an OS more "stable", or "secure
      • I don't think kernel development consists of just copying/pasting code between OS'es. And the QNX license won't permit that, anyway.

        But Linux kernel developers can now study the QNX code to see the techniques they use to solve realtime problems. And implementing new functions supporting the QNX API will now be more straightforward, in new code. That's what I want to see.

  • The problem is, QNX management has said that before:

    "The new QNX initiative consists of several key elements . . .

    • In recognition of the ease with which developers can obtain and begin development with Linux, QNX has decided to make their new QNX Realtime Platform free "for non-commercial use". Developers can now download the software and its associated development directly from the QNX website.
    • In response to the growing desire for source code that has resulted from the exploding popularity of open-
  • This article tries to make you believe it will be release under an open source license, but apparently, it will be nothing more than a proprietary license that lets you look at the source code.

    It looks like a lame marketing campaign to get people to contribute for free to their proprietary project.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nurb432 ( 527695 )
      Except you don't have to contribute your work back to them, unlike other 'open' ( but restrictive ) licenses.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by BokLM ( 550487 ) *
        Nothing say you have to contribute back your work in BSD or even GPL licenses. You can keep it for yourself. If you distribute it however, the GPL asks you to distribute your changes as GPL, but that not the case for BSD and most other open source licenses. And I doubt that their license will allow you to redistribute your modified version, or that would probably qualify as an open source license (and they say it is not). So their statement that their license is not open source but something better is ridic

  • Not a surprise (Score:3, Informative)

    by gnalre ( 323830 ) on Wednesday September 12, 2007 @02:02PM (#20577249)
    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.

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