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Handhelds Software Linux Hardware

Wind River Joins the Mobile Linux Fray 45

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the self-proclaimed-battles-royale dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Embedded software powerhouse Wind River launched a Consumer Electronics Linux distribution today targeting 'mobile phones, set-top boxes, PVRs, and other small-footprint consumer devices.' The company says several phones based on its brand of Linux will begin shipping before the end of this year, and is rumored to have teamed with PalmSource, which itself is busy converting Palm OS into a software stack for Linux mobile phones."
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Wind River Joins the Mobile Linux Fray More

Wind River Joins the Mobile Linux Fray

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  • Looking over the Wind River site I was unable to find any information about this. It looks interesting for use in my next project. Oh well, I guess it's vaporware or they really aren't intested in supporting it. I'll go back to finishing making my own distro.
  • PyQT and PyKDE bindings?

  • Good thing is (Score:4, Insightful)

    by cached ( 801963 ) on Wednesday October 05, 2005 @03:44PM (#13724472)
    The good thing is that in any event, multi-vendor competition bodes well for Linux's chances against single-vendor operating systems such as Windows Mobile and Symbian, since competitors in the Linux space end up contributing to an evolving shared base of open source software.

    • Re:Good thing is (Score:2, Insightful)

      by rufty_tufty ( 888596 )
      Really, last I heard more people buy the bulk of their things from Wallmart than from their local grocer.
      Isn't too many options a bad thing that as a customer of Linux I don't know who to buy.

      Last I checked a few goliaths competing tended to advance further than lots of Davids each with the fixed overheads then repeating the same work.

      That said, Windriver do some pretty nifty RTOS stuff with VxWorks, so I'm glad they're progressing with their Linux solution
    • No No No. You are supposed to say:

      "The good thing is that in any event, multi-vendor competition DOES NOT bode well for Linux's chances against single-vendor operating systems such as Windows Mobile and Symbian, since competitors in the Linux space end up contributing to an regressing shared base of pirated software."

      I will cancell you check and send SB to your office for chair reorganization.

      Sincerely,

      Billy G,
      CEO, CFO, Chairman and what not.
    • Are you out of your mind?

      Compare that to incompatibilities and the poor hardware support that inevitably follows in the plethora of linux OSs that hit!

      These guys won't be releasing open source drivers they'll release binary drivers with API support and the LINUX pocket OSs will make a mess of them, IF the OS gets developed in house it MIGHT be ok.

      But none of the qualities that make linux superior are applicable to devices that are best served with PalmOS.

      It is increadibly stable, user friendly and c

  • Rumored to have teamed with PalmSource? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Sam Haine '95 ( 918696 ) on Wednesday October 05, 2005 @03:44PM (#13724476)
    From TFA:
    It will be interesting to see whether newcomer PalmSource, which is busy converting Palm OS into a software stack running on Linux, taps Wind River as a Linux OS partner in the mobile phone space, as has been rumored. For its part, however, MontaVista already announced an alliance with PalmSource in August.
    PalmSource have always claimed that PalmOS-for-Linux is to be distro-agnostic, allowing the hardware manufacterer to decide which distro to use.

  • Liscensing (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rufty_tufty ( 888596 ) on Wednesday October 05, 2005 @03:48PM (#13724500) Homepage
    Looking at the article they're planning to liscense this on a per devloper per year basis. One thing I don't get though is how this fits in with the GPL, surely the key thing Windriver offer is tweeks to the kernel to make it a good RTOS and associted BSPs for the various phones. But those would have to be GPLed as well.
    So what is there here that isn't GPLed and therefore why would someone pay for this? Or is it the tools, this CELF of which they speak?

    • Re:Liscensing (Score:3, Informative)

      by slashflood ( 697891 )
      Or is it the tools, this CELF of which they speak?

      Consumer Electronics Linux Forum (CELF) [celinuxforum.org] (currently down)

      All the major consumer electronics comanies are members of CELF.

    • It's all about the tools (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Wesley Felter ( 138342 ) <wesley@felter.org> on Wednesday October 05, 2005 @04:22PM (#13724715) Homepage
      All the embedded Linux companies have non-open-source tools and documentation; that's really what they're selling (since the kernel and userland are free).

    • Re:Liscensing (Score:3, Informative)

      by thegrassyknowl ( 762218 )
      WindRiver still sell their ScopeTools (MemScope, ProfileScope, StethoScope) that rely on a proprietary backend being loaded onto the Linux box. I, personally, don't think the tools are worth the price of the plastic in the CDs they come on. Others here seem to like them.

      You also get WindRiver Workbench (an Eclipse plugin). It's cute but there are better editors and debuggers out there if you must pay for them. I prefer Emacs for editing and good old-fashioned Makefiles for building. I much prefer DDD (
      • Companies actually get business done by partnering with other companies -- business relationships. Business relationships allow the companies to divide the problem solving space up. For example, telecomm company T is tired of having 6 internal Linux development teams (say 40 people overall) for their product line all learning and solving the same problems over and over, and tries to collect them into one team. While they do this they also consider an OS vendor that might be able to do the same thing. They d

  • "pristine kernel sources" (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jhoger ( 519683 ) on Wednesday October 05, 2005 @03:53PM (#13724534) Homepage
    So is the kernel redistributable under the GPL once it has been patched by WindRiver's wizard? Anyone know the license they use on the patches, or do you end up with a tainted kernel which cannot be redistributed without a separate license agreement from WindRiver?

    Such a wizard sounds like a great way to sneak around the license to me, or at least pass on liability to customers.

    -- John
    • More likely, they'll be removing things to make it smaller.
    • In that situation, the kernel source is still covered under the gpl, as would be any patches they apply to the pristine tree. Which would mean they'd have to redistribute the source.

      As I understand it. IANAL, FYI, BYOB, MMO, PHP and ECT...
      • Well, it seems clear that the customer would have an obligation to when they distribute it. The creator of the wizard supplies a tool that downloads the kernel from kernel.org and patches it. The user runs the tool, so the user downloads the kernel, the user does the patches. the user redistributes the end result in their product.

        Who has liability? The end user certainly. But what about the creator of the wizard? Quite possibly, none at all.

        The creator of the wizard never redistributed the kernel, so the GP

  • Why would I want such a thing? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 05, 2005 @04:00PM (#13724577)

    Why on earth would I want a WinDriver in my linux kernel?

    /* gets coat */

  • Timesys in Pittsburgh has been doing this for years, and I think they went carrier grade recently. I think they're having product/organization issues, and I don't approve of their hiring practices. But, good people working on good code -- what's left of them!
  • When will you learn that you need something to set you apart? Windriver has dev tools. Hear that sound? It's Windriver eating your lunch.
  • Wind River has always been working with Linux on embedded systems, or even with some odd embedded CPU's like PIC's. They have a free, open source Eclipse module for various systems.
  • WRS was one of Cygnus's early customers (starting 1990 or 1991) and, although they depended on the GNU development tools, used to make fun of the free software model and us in particular. Then they moved in the BSD direction and still made fun of the GPL. What a turn-around.

  • Developers Are Their Customers (Score:3, Interesting)

    by RichiP ( 18379 ) on Wednesday October 05, 2005 @06:26PM (#13725637) Homepage
    I agree that competition is good and is necessary in order for companies and their products to improve as best they can (not to mention more choices for consumers and lesser chances of price-fixing), both Wind River and Montavista should always be aware that they both have a responsibility to the developers who are their customers. The danger here is that bickering and fragmentations might paint a bleak landscape to developers and drive them towards Windows. It would be the Unix Wars all over again.

    I believe that these two companies should develop and improve their products as best they can but always collude on making things easier for developers to share the same codebase. Since they're now working in an opensource environment, technical prowess in their engineers as well as great customer service are where they will be competing in. With equal access to source (assuming they release them), it would be in service satisfaction that would differentiate them most. If I were device manufacturer, I would more likely choose the company with the better team of engineers as well as customer service reps.
    • There's little bickering at the open source community level between WR and MV -- the engineers and management teams believe in getting useful fixes back into community mainstream source, if for no other reason than to reduce the size of their patchsets they have to maintain, and because it's good for credibility and the community. MV and WR are going after the same customers, who want a common feature set. It's good for embedded application developer customers to have a choice of distros (MV, WR, TimeSys,
  • I hate it when people use the word stack when the actually mean a module or a library!! Palm OS will probably run as a module+library combo.
  • When is the Linux port of Tornado gonna be released?

    In order to do VxWorks development with my Linux box, I had to build my own cross-compiler and copy all the target runtime libraries over.
    Good thing I know how to compile on the command line and use Makefiles......

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