embedded devices and open source

Ben Scott dragonhawk at gmail.com
Fri Feb 23 18:22:21 EST 2007


On 2/23/07, Jeffry Smith <jsmith at alum.mit.edu> wrote:
>>  A common concern is support -- support that the manufactuer gives to
>> people who buy their stuff.
>
> Of course, another concern is THEIR support.  Remember most embedded
> folks don't write their own OS.

  Right.  And eight years ago, that might have been a valid objection
to Linux.  But these days, there are whole companies that do nothing
but Linux support, and lots of it.  Plus there's support from others
vendors.  Lots of people want to run Linux in the embedded space, so
hardware vendors (chip, board, systems, etc.) offer varying levels of
support, from fair to excellent, depending.  So I consider the "Can we
('we' being the integrated product manufacturer) get support?"
question mostly answered these days.

> However, from what I understand from embedded folks I've talked to, Wind River
> & others don't give such great support.

  s/Wind River & others/the whole damn IT industry/

> And some don't understand what their product is.  ... Ask the
> company how many drivers they sell.  No hardware, just the
> drivers.  I'll lay you odds it's zero.

  Of course, hardware without drivers tends to be zero, too.  Hardware
and software need to go together.  Most companies are developing and
selling the package.

  Better questions are:

  1. *Can* we sell the software independently?  Would it be worth the
effort?  Are we likely to ever do so?
  2. What knowledge is in the software?  What will giving that
knowledge away cost us?
  3. What potential benefit can we reap by accepting Free Software
contributions?

  #1 takes your question and looks at it properly.  Maybe a company
might actually be able to sell their code to others looking to do the
same thing.  If not, forget this objection.  Even if they *could* sell
it, would the expected revenue from selling the code be worth the
effort of turning it into a salable product?  Are they ever going to
do so?

  #2 looks at the potential dangers of reverse engineering.
Sometimes, by reading source code, you can deduce quite a bit of about
the hardware.  (Purportedly, modern 3D video cards and their drivers
are extremely tightly integrated, to the point where the boundaries
are blurred.  That might be a legitimate concern (or not).  But for a
print server or NAT router?  Not so much.)  How likely is it that
someone will go to that effort?  What' will it cost 'us' if someone
does so?

  #3 looks at the other side of the cost/benefit question.  What's the
ROI likely to be?  The LinkSys WRT54G shows that it can conceivably be
quite high.  Third-party software has fixed bugs and added outstanding
features.  If LinkSys had been smart, and released their own stuff
under a license like the Mozilla MPL, they might well have been able
to reap huge rewards from an Open Source approach, by getting others
to (re)write their code for free.

-- Ben


More information about the gnhlug-discuss mailing list