Re: [gentoo-embedded] Wind River Linux experience

[Kfir Lavi]

On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 3:49 PM, wireless <wireless@×××××××××××.com> wrote:

> On 03/23/11 05:46, Kfir Lavi wrote:
>
> > I'm trying to migrate a big company to Gentoo.
> > This company have a contract with Wind River for support and use.
> > I don't have any experience with Wind River, so I would be happy to
> > hear your experience with it, and what it's pros and cons.
>
> > Regards,
> > Kfir
>
> All by yourself? That's a LARGE statement.
>
> Wind River is the 600 lb Gorilla in the commercial
> RTOS space. Everything from proprietary, to BSDish to embedded
> Linux, state machines...... you name it they sell
> (and mostly) support it.
>
>
> Large companies use Wind River, because of many reasons,
> but it is a "one stop shop" and Business managers
> like that. Wind River can  write (and often do) the
> entire code for products or products lines, fast and
> efficient. However, their "Achilles  heal"  is
> they are EXPENSIVE to partner with; most often retaining
> the intellectual property rights to all of the codes they
> develop or sell.
>
> Their business model is the "lock-in" and often, after years
> of a relationship with a company, the victim (um, I mean customer)
> finds out that WR is licensing the code to a competitor.....
> Bad ju-ju, but legal and happens all the time.
>
>
> So you are talking about helping a company take the "long road" to
> freedom and profitability, via embedded Linux (Gentoo specifically).
>
> Depending on the complexity of the of their codes, number of products,
> etc, etc, you can easily be successful. However, be realistic. Pick
> off the "low hanging fruit"; i.e. simple products to re-write the code
> or new product offerings. WR will often get companies in a "tangled"
> mess by the choices of processors, SOC, video chips etc etc where
> NDAs and no published specifications make WR the only choice, or a
> complete (hardware and software) redesign.
>
> My advice:
> Work smart, build a team (open source) that gradually assimilates
> new products and the other easy "knock-off"  and take your time.
> Walking into a large company and pitching "kick WR out" is difficult
> in many circumstances.  Most of all, remember that in this company their
> are managers that drink and eat and "sup" with WR and they have built
> a career on a partnership with WR. They'll stab you in the back and
> you'll never see it coming.
>
> Also remember companies want to make a profit. So their management will
> need "some sort of angle" as to what they have unique about their
> product so other cannot just copy the code and sell it. When you
> maintain proprietary source code, that is the lock for a company,
> combined with patents. When you pitch open source solutions, you
> and the company manager, must figure out a "unique" hook so as to
> protect that company's investment and profit potential of the product
> that is now open sources. YMMV.
>
>
>
> Caveat Emptor!
>
> But it is entirely doable depending on the "TEAM" you build as the
> leader of this venture.
>
>  GOOD LUCK!
> James
>
> Wow James thanks a lot for your insight.
It seems that WR is a giant BSP house, which is good for really preliminary
explorations of new hardware. I can see their benefit for an organization
that
don't really know what is Linux.
The company I work with have a lot of projects. Most of them relay on a
known
and debugged hardware. I'm not intending to change all of their working way,

but for a start I'm trying to push Gentoo in the project I'm working on, and
if it
does happen, it will propagate to other similar projects.
One important point you made is that WR keeps their intellectual property
rights
for helping you. I didn't know this.

Do you happen to know if they let you compile your project from source, or
they
give you binaries? How many packages I can expect them to support in their
tree?

Thanks for your answers,
Kfir