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Does it include the GUI - the GUI IMHO is the *best* component of QNX. Also, another benefit, it is a microkernel.

I'd love to see it not only in PDA's but things like routers etc.

Does it include the GUI - the GUI IMHO is the *best* component of QNX. Also, another benefit, it is a microkernel.

Erm, did you read? It's one of the questions, actually.

It doesn't matter if this is licensed under the GPL. The fact that this is now free software means that we have the liberty to study the logic of that code. This means that we can write our own code that implements the same logic and we can release our (hypothetical) software under any license that we have chosen.

Umm... it's NOT free sofware. It's NOT open source.
If anything, it's a kind of "shared source".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_source

Umm... it's NOT free sofware. It's NOT open source.
If anything, it's a kind of "shared source".

Nonsense.

They allow everyone to look at the code, download it, compile it, change it, share it with their peers or keep it to themselves, heck, they can even make a distribution and put that online - they are just not allowed to sell it.

Thom, frankly, do you think they would carefully avoid calling it "open source" or "free sofware" if it qualified as that? I won't remind you the OSD or the FSF definition of Free Sofware. So, again, it's NOT Free Sofware, it's NOT Open Source (maybe the caps help to clarify?) and if you disagree, just Google it. You seem to have been deceived by their announcement, just like they planned.

Oh, and it would help you think more clearly if you avoided buying into their speaking about "selling" the sofware or "commercial deployment". That's very confusing and they know it. They try to blur the distinction between making a derivative under a proprietary license, and setting up a project to distribute sofware and provide support for profit, which are two VERY different things. Software is either free or proprietary. Free software can be deployed commercially (as Red Hat and other do). You can use Free Software at home and in the office, and you can set up your business around Free Sofware, without fears that anyone will charge you for making "commercial" use of said sofware.

You're right. I was wrong. I was blinded by the Apache 2.0 license. I didn't read answer 7 closely enough.

That also happened to me at first. I think it's a rather confusing announcement

Strange, there are no jobs listed on their site. This is the first time I've seen this in what, 10 years? Is this a bad sign for the company? I did initially wonder if open sourcing the s/w implied the company was cutting staff or going through troubled times.

I think their primary revenue has been support, not the actual sale of their software. If this is true, going open source makes perfect sense. The company benefits by having the open source community (hypothetically) contributing to the OS relatively cost-free, and the community benefits by learning their numerous engineering accomplishments in the realm of real-time computation.

A fairly major source of revenue in the embedded market for them is actually royalties. The commercial users pay a fee for each system shipped with QNX running on it.

It goes in both way, maybe you fail to see all the amount of money they invest in it and are unwilling to let other company making profit out of it.


Then why should the license "limitation" a problem?

> It goes in both way, maybe you fail to see all the
> amount of money they invest in it and are unwilling to > let other company making profit out of it.

No, I think it comes down to their business model.
Like Sun, IBM, etc. QNX also realized how their market (Aix,Solaris,etc) is being eaten alive by Linux and the overall opensource community projects (PHP, MySQL, etc), in the server, embedded, etc areas,

Even if their are strong in their own areas (Solaris for highend servers, QNX for mbedded/realtime/critical), it is undeniable that they still share a lot with the opensource OS arena, which is growing several times faster than them, and makes them realize they are missing a big business chance.

Even microsoft did at some point see this and attempted to compete by using their "Shared Source" licenses (failing miserably).

But it's been proven endless times that unless the project is FULLY open, and not something that "resembles being open" or just "free", the community will lack interest and will not pick it up. Beos and QNX itself were examples of this. They looked great, worked great, but then died and left their "community" out in the cold.

So I think it's good to point out that either QNX really goes open, or they'll likely not get much community adherence. To me, it's just another in the long list of companies that don't seem to "get it", and repeat the same mistake over and over.

Neither Beos or QNX were open source, just free to copy. I am sure if Beos was open source, Haiku developers would have concentrated their efforts on the existing code base rather than starting from scratch.

Edited 2007-09-12 13:35

So I think it's good to point out that either QNX really goes open, or they'll likely not get much community adherence.

Define "open".

If you definition of "open" is either GPL or BSD - and nothing more... Than you have a very narrow-minded view on the world... And we all know what happens to narrow-minded people.

If you definition of "open" is either GPL or BSD - and nothing more... Than you have a very narrow-minded view on the world...

I don't think so. It often doesn't make much sense investing code into something that is not open as in opensource or free software. An opensource license put every participant in a project on an equal footing. When that is not the case, one participant in a project (QNX in this case) can play games with whoever is dependent on QNX for making their money. In an opensource project, the contributions of participants lifts the tide for every participant, and contributors can be sure that they won't be locked in, or disadvanted in other ways.

Of course, licenses differ in their strength to regulate participation, and arguably, the GPL is a lot better at it than the BSD license (just to name one other commonly used license). Additionally, dual licensing like MySQL does, is a kind of workaround.

And we all know what happens to narrow-minded people.

Right, like what? At any rate, many companies make misuse of the term "open" in software to suggest opensource. While this is explicitly denied in the interview (though the Apache license bit confused me for a second), it's not suprising that people enumerate the term 'open' with 'opensource'.

Edited 2007-09-12 14:01

Define "open"

I guess he means Free Software. There are many, many Free licenses apart from GPL and BSD. But QNX won't use any of the existing ones, nor their own Free license. They'll use a "friendly" one.

That's ok with me, of course. And I thank them for it (even if I have never used QNX and don't have plans to use it soon). But it's true that with a "friendly" license they won't get too much community contributions.

Yes, they become politicians and managers.

Beos and QNX itself were examples of this. They looked great, worked great, but then died

QNX died? news to me. and to all the companies using it too, I presume.

Every time you use a credit/debit card in that touchscreen box at Target, you're looking at a QNX platform. That's 10-15 seats x every Target store in North America.

Isn't this somewhat similar to what Trolltech does?

If you simply want to play with it, use it, tweak it, spread it (say, make a distro) it's free.
If you want to make money out of it, the company makes money too.
In both cases you get to modify it at will.

Sounds like a reasonable long term strategy for a company rather than wishy-washy GPLing (or BSDing) it.

Edited 2007-09-12 13:29

Actually not. Trolltech releases QT under two commercial licenses. One license is Proprietary Commercial, and the other license is FLOSS Commercial. Both licenses allows for commercial use.

Proprietary is not the same as commercial. Licenses which do not allow for commercial use are not open. All open licenses allow for commercial use, incl. GPL and Apache License 2.0.

Nope. Trolltech (though I don't agree with the choice of GPL) chose a license that allows commercial development, etc. The QNX license will not allow commercial development (without a separate agreement with them).

In theory, you could perform commercial development with Qt's open source edition.

They could have offered the same freedom to their existing commercial customers without this bizarre licensing incompatibility situation.

No, not the same way. Sun chose an open source license for their code that meets all of the commonly accepted definitions of what open source is.

QNX has chosen a license that is clearly not reflective of what most people accept as "open" and will severely restrict what their community can do with the code due to license incompatibilities.

While they are to be commended for trying, I think they're just confusing matters. Even Microsoft has chosen better licensing terms for many of their "shared source" projects with the Ms-PL, etc.

Apache? Where did you read that? I read it as only being board support not the kernel.

Edited 2007-09-12 13:20

"QNX source code is being released with the Apache Licence 2.0, which is compatible with the GNU GPL v3."

But only one way? Can people change the code and release it under GPL v3 only so it can't get transfered back to QNX?

I hate GPL, even if it protects "freedom". It's a little evil to FORCE "freedom" on everyone =P

You mean a webkit "port" like Konqueror?

Konqueror is a really nice browser - if you use KDE.

But qt-webkit is afaik not yet released, is it?

No, what I was talking about was more of a webkit-photon using native widgets and so on.

QNX's browser, Voyager, already supports multiple rendering engines, so UI-wise, there's little to do.

Maybe cdm will update KillerIRC

it's more useful than you think, as an asp.net web developer i also looked at the mono source. having the internal workings of your platform at your disposal can cut debugging times a lot.

My guess is that the only time you will need to look at the kernel code is when you are having problems, and boy will you be glad then.

Well, the anouncement seems to be targeted more at OS enthusiasts rather that businesses, even though QSSL is all about business.
Anyway, you can't call that "nothing" because it gives people a great code example to study and educate themselves. And if you're running a business you shouldn't expect to get things for free.

No it isn't.



Yes it is. Everyone can read the source at will, it is "open" to the public.

You need to clearly differentiate between the two. That is why there are OSI open source licenses which are not considered to be free software by everyone.

Anyway QNX has made a decision which makes sense for their business. Giving away their flagship product would probably ruin them (unlike Sun which doesn't depend on Solaris to bring in the megabucks.) Instead they have opted to just open their source so their clients can write better software because they are aware of how things work internally. Sounds like a good idea to me.

Fine - but this isn't even under an OSI approved license, is it?

So I wouldn't call it "Open Source". Open Source implies more than just "I can view the code".

No, it's not and probably couldn't be approved by OSI, because you cannot freely redistribute the product (you need to buy a license.)
I guess it depends on what your definition of "open" is. ([CLINTON MODE OFF])

"Again, nothing really happened. If you download source of this "open source" kernel, and browse it - please read the headers. "

Would you please paste the license in a pastebin and provide a link? That would be very helpful.

http://rafb.net/paste/

Which lacked the driver for the Intel PRO network card in most Dells built between 199x-2002 or most of the modern softmodem cards. This was unbelievably frustrating.

Edited 2007-09-12 16:15 UTC

The title and the tone of the interview seems to suggest otherwise, misleading the reader, but in the end he admits it's NOT open source, it just "feels exactly like" open source, and "is a better model". Personally, as a free software enthusiast, I must say I find these words rather insulting, and a lame marketing campaign.

I don't see where exactly it is claimed this is "open source as defined by the OSI and/or FSF". The article says just that - they're opening up the source code. You can view the code, modify it for your personal use and/or contribute those changes back to the community.

Sadly, these days, it are the big organisations (FSF, OSI) who get to decide what's open and what's not. To me, QNX here has made a very smart move, that only benefits us enthusiasts. So, this code can't be copied/pasted into the Linux kernel... Well, too bad, then. Doesn't mean the code is not open.

I, for one, am extremely pleased, and wish the company all the luck in the world with their effort.

"I don't see where exactly it is claimed this is "open source as defined by the OSI and/or FSF" "

Nowhere in the article such a claim is made. Otherwise it would be an outright lie, not just misleading.

You are right in that, AFAIK, the term "open source" is not trademarked (and neither is "Free software" IIRC), so, technically, maybe you could even say it's "open source, just not by the OSI definition". But I hope you agree that would be *extremely* misleading, and as such, contrary to good journalism style.

I get rather heated when some initiatives try to sell themselves as kind of "equivalent to all practical purposes to open source, just better" to entice naive developers into contributing to a proprietary product.

Other than that, I think your coverage of the new was in good faith, just that you got carried away by your technical enthusiasm about QNX and microkernels in general, which I understand and even share, up to a point. So let's say I hope they realise their mistake and change to a REAL open-source license.

Actually "Open Source" used to be a trademark, but its legal status at this moment is unknown (the same status as in 1999). The trademark still exists.

Besides that the term "open source" was invented specifically as a term for sources one could use, modify and distribute for commercial as well as non-commercial use.

Your attempt at redefining "open source" is - to put it mildly - quite unethical.

I think the trademark is "OSI certified". It seems that "open source" could not be trademarked for being too descriptive.

http://slashdot.org/articles/99/06/17/0213251.shtml

Absolutely. Although I agree that the opening of the QNX source is not what you could call 'GPL' like, it's still opening the source code for all to see.

So you can't make a commercial product out of your changes without buying a license? Where is the problem in that? QNX, unlike Sun or IBM, are not a hardware company and need to make a buck some how.

As for this being opensource, of course it is. You can see the source, change it and compile your own binaries from that source. What else could possibly be ment by opensource software?

AS far as I can tell, nobody is trying to hoodwink naive developers here by calling a spade a spade. If you want free as in libre software, choose the GPL. It's that simple.

BTW, Thom. Bad mouthing and misquoting me does not make you look any better.

EDIT: Removed subtle insult

Edited 2007-09-12 23:31 UTC