OSNews:

OSNews: http://www.osnews.com/story/18596/QNX_Opens_Neutrino_Source_Code_Interview_QNX_CEO Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Sun, 08 Nov 2009 20:47:42 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif OSNews.com http://www.osnews.com Good news? http://osnews.com/thread?270521 http://osnews.com/thread?270521 I know a lot of people will be excited about this. And I know some will bitch about it not being GPL. But the real question I have is how does everyone think this might impact embedded Linux projects like OpenMoko? Wed, 12 Sep 2007 12:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (thryllkill) Comments Wooah! Cool! http://osnews.com/thread?270523 http://osnews.com/thread?270523 Wooah! Cool!

Does this mean QNX's primary business/revenue stream is no longer their OS?

I considered applying for a job at QNX, but decided against it. Now they're heading into open source territory, it's a bit more appealing again. Wed, 12 Sep 2007 12:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (stodge) Comments RE: Good news? http://osnews.com/thread?270525 http://osnews.com/thread?270525 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. Wed, 12 Sep 2007 12:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (kaiwai) Comments RE[2]: Good news? http://osnews.com/thread?270526 http://osnews.com/thread?270526 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. Wed, 12 Sep 2007 12:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda) Comments Well, the idea is welcome but.. http://osnews.com/thread?270529 http://osnews.com/thread?270529 The "open source for non commercial use" license is kind of dumb..
They _are_ QNX after all, the same way Sun is Sun.

Properly open sourcing QNX will attract a much bigger developer community. They can even use a dual-like license, and make sure that 1) If using a GPL/MPL-like approach, they only accept changes for inclusion in the main branch if ownership or special usage rights are granted 2) If using BSD/MIT, etc license, they can easily just merge the changes.

I don't understand why does QNX fail to see this..

--

To make the point clearer, they are still the owners of the product and it's not like anyone will take it from them if they opensource it. Same way it happens with Solaris and Sun. On the other hand, they will get a much larger community instead.Edited 2007-09-12 12:15 Wed, 12 Sep 2007 12:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (reduz) Comments This is great... http://osnews.com/thread?270530 http://osnews.com/thread?270530 Not just for commercial ventures, but hobbyists that want to dabble, and just perhaps wind up entering into the commercial venture realm, should their personal projects/research pan out.

Perhaps the iPhone will soon have a QNX port

This also opens up a lot of other single board computers (PCI-104 and other mutations) that aren't especially powerful systems that are (perhaps) old PC-compatible or mostly so, as well as those that just fit the form factors, that are relatively cheap to get, and provides another option with great development tools and an OS you can easily strip down to the bare requirements. Wed, 12 Sep 2007 12:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (JonathanBThompson) Comments From QNX6 to QNX6 http://osnews.com/thread?270537 http://osnews.com/thread?270537 So do we see the old story repeating? It sounds like the good ole days of QNX6.0 only better in a sense that they don't intend to take the OS away or cripple it with time limits.
One thought flashed through my mind though: they're late. They should've made that move several years ago and could have had a great thriving community by now. Back in the day enthusiasts were really excited about QNX. Now they'll just have to spend all those marketing resources again to attract the dev crowd back. Hey, we've even seen QNX news sites shutting down recently...
Anyway, wishing them luck and wishing them to have a separate deskop/evangelistic department within the company. Nothing commercial or serious, mind you, just to fuel the interest.

PS Their site is broken in Safari v3. Does it work in Voyager though, heh.

PPS And bring back William Bull. Pleeeeease!Edited 2007-09-12 12:46 Wed, 12 Sep 2007 12:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Buck) Comments RE: Well, the idea is welcome but.. http://osnews.com/thread?270539 http://osnews.com/thread?270539

I don't understand why does QNX fail to see this..

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.

To make the point clearer, they are still the owners of the product and it's not like anyone will take it from them if they opensource it. Same way it happens with Solaris and Sun.

Then why should the license "limitation" a problem? Wed, 12 Sep 2007 12:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (sanctus) Comments No problems about it now being GPL http://osnews.com/thread?270545 http://osnews.com/thread?270545 QNX source code is being released with the Apache Licence 2.0, which is compatible with the GNU GPL v3. Wed, 12 Sep 2007 13:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Sodki) Comments RE: Wooah! Cool! http://osnews.com/thread?270547 http://osnews.com/thread?270547 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. Wed, 12 Sep 2007 13:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (stodge) Comments RE[2]: Well, the idea is welcome but.. http://osnews.com/thread?270548 http://osnews.com/thread?270548 > 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. Wed, 12 Sep 2007 13:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (reduz) Comments RE: No problems about it now being GPL http://osnews.com/thread?270549 http://osnews.com/thread?270549 Apache? Where did you read that? I read it as only being board support not the kernel.Edited 2007-09-12 13:20 Wed, 12 Sep 2007 13:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (chekr) Comments REALLY REALLY REALLY COOL!!! http://osnews.com/thread?270550 http://osnews.com/thread?270550 As in the subject! :-D Wed, 12 Sep 2007 13:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (JohnOne) Comments RE: Well, the idea is welcome but.. http://osnews.com/thread?270551 http://osnews.com/thread?270551

The "open source for non commercial use" license is kind of dumb

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 Wed, 12 Sep 2007 13:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (dimosd) Comments RE[3]: Well, the idea is welcome but.. http://osnews.com/thread?270552 http://osnews.com/thread?270552

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.

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 Wed, 12 Sep 2007 13:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (dimosd) Comments RE[3]: Well, the idea is welcome but.. http://osnews.com/thread?270555 http://osnews.com/thread?270555 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. Wed, 12 Sep 2007 13:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda) Comments RE[3]: Well, the idea is welcome but.. http://osnews.com/thread?270557 http://osnews.com/thread?270557 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. Wed, 12 Sep 2007 13:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (KLU9) Comments wow! http://osnews.com/thread?270558 http://osnews.com/thread?270558 That was a pleasant surprise! Wed, 12 Sep 2007 13:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (JrezIN) Comments Great news http://osnews.com/thread?270559 http://osnews.com/thread?270559 I've always liked QNX. I started messing with it when I moved to Japan and was looking for something to pass the time while I was not working. Back then, I think it was QNX 4 something, you could install from CD in under 5 minutes. Total network transparency. Totally cool.

I'd love to see a port of the Photon MicroUI to other nixs, man that would rock! Wed, 12 Sep 2007 13:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (SReilly) Comments RE[2]: Well, the idea is welcome but.. http://osnews.com/thread?270561 http://osnews.com/thread?270561 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. Wed, 12 Sep 2007 13:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (dylansmrjones) Comments Not sure about this... http://osnews.com/thread?270562 http://osnews.com/thread?270562 While the code being open will certainly be useful as a source of study, the licensing will severely restrict how people can use it.

QNX is merely continuing to muddy the waters of licensing for projects that make their code available. Microsoft at least had the decency to choose licensing terms that would be compatible with a great deal of code that is available in the open source community.

The non-commercial restriction of the code will make it difficult at best to be able to use anything but BSD, MIT, or X11 -style open source code in combination with QNX code.

While this is beneficial for QNX's customers, I can't help but think that their company has "missed the point."

Nonetheless, they are to be commended for trying. Wed, 12 Sep 2007 13:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (binarycrusader) Comments RE: Well, the idea is welcome but.. http://osnews.com/thread?270563 http://osnews.com/thread?270563

Same way it happens with Solaris and Sun. On the other hand, they will get a much larger community instead.

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. Wed, 12 Sep 2007 13:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (binarycrusader) Comments RE[2]: Well, the idea is welcome but.. http://osnews.com/thread?270564 http://osnews.com/thread?270564

Isn't this somewhat similar to what Trolltech does?

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. Wed, 12 Sep 2007 13:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (binarycrusader) Comments awsome http://osnews.com/thread?270565 http://osnews.com/thread?270565 i for one think this is great Wed, 12 Sep 2007 13:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (poundsmack) Comments RE[4]: Well, the idea is welcome but.. http://osnews.com/thread?270567 http://osnews.com/thread?270567 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 Wed, 12 Sep 2007 14:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (danieldk) Comments RE[4]: Well, the idea is welcome but.. http://osnews.com/thread?270568 http://osnews.com/thread?270568 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. Wed, 12 Sep 2007 14:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Luis) Comments umpc/mid? http://osnews.com/thread?270569 http://osnews.com/thread?270569 thats the one place i would like to test qnx i think, on umpc/mid devices

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 14:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (hobgoblin) Comments best news I've heard in years http://osnews.com/thread?270571 http://osnews.com/thread?270571 Pity a few years late for my original goals... *sigh* But, welcome to the party! Wed, 12 Sep 2007 14:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Downix) Comments Good news. http://osnews.com/thread?270574 http://osnews.com/thread?270574 QNX is a very interesting operating system for a small, energy-efficient desktop system (e.g. sam440ep, efika).

A typical Linux system is already overkill for daily usage and provided a good browser (Opera sucks least imho, but a webkit port would be most promising), text editor and media player, I would ditch my current Archlinux desktop instantly. Wed, 12 Sep 2007 14:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (johkra) Comments Nice, but no help http://osnews.com/thread?270577 http://osnews.com/thread?270577 My company uses QNX commercially. As much as I think this announcement is good, it doesn't help me at all, at least directly. Neither myself nor any of my co-workers has the ability, inclination, or business case for even LOOKING at the micro-kernel source code, much less modifying it.

But maybe someone will port OpenJDK to QNX, and that would be quite helpful to me.

-James Ingraham
Sage Automation, Inc. Wed, 12 Sep 2007 14:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (ingraham) Comments Wow! http://osnews.com/thread?270591 http://osnews.com/thread?270591 This is great! Ever since 6.3 came out, QNX has died as a community. So many apps are so far behind (X11, Gaim, Abiword, etc) because of the restrictions place on 6.3.

I love QNX and its UI. I can't wait for the apps to start flowing, just like in the 6.2 days.

Rock on! Wed, 12 Sep 2007 14:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (zizban) Comments Big nothing http://osnews.com/thread?270594 http://osnews.com/thread?270594 Again, nothing really happened. If you download source of this "open source" kernel, and browse it - please read the headers.

You can't call this free software, you can't even call this open source.

It seems like they wanted to make bug fuss about that, it's free commercial for them - I understand that - but it is nowhere close to revolution - until it's free for commercial use and redistribution - nothing changes. Wed, 12 Sep 2007 15:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (kajaman) Comments RE: Big nothing http://osnews.com/thread?270600 http://osnews.com/thread?270600 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. Wed, 12 Sep 2007 15:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Buck) Comments RE: Good news. http://osnews.com/thread?270607 http://osnews.com/thread?270607 You mean a webkit "port" like Konqueror? Wed, 12 Sep 2007 15:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Constantine XVI) Comments RE: Big nothing http://osnews.com/thread?270608 http://osnews.com/thread?270608

You can't call this free software

No it isn't.

you can't even call this open source

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. Wed, 12 Sep 2007 15:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Tyr.) Comments Much ado about nothing http://osnews.com/thread?270610 http://osnews.com/thread?270610 Okay, so what exactly _are_ the licensing terms?

It's not any of the [L]GPLv[23] licenses, it's not MIT/X/BSD licensing, it's more than likely not an OSI approved license - so it's not "Open Source" at all. This is "look but don't touch open".

This is (maybe) good for existing customers of QNX and that's it. I'm sure their internal processes will be more open too, and they probably did the work to vet where all their copyrighted code came from, which is healthy too.

But this is definitely not an "Open Source" move. Wed, 12 Sep 2007 15:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (obi_oni) Comments RE[4]: Well, the idea is welcome but.. http://osnews.com/thread?270611 http://osnews.com/thread?270611

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

Yes, they become politicians and managers. Wed, 12 Sep 2007 15:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Tyr.) Comments RE[2]: Big nothing http://osnews.com/thread?270612 http://osnews.com/thread?270612 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". Wed, 12 Sep 2007 15:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (obi_oni) Comments All I know is... http://osnews.com/thread?270613 http://osnews.com/thread?270613 ...how cool the floppy was that QNX used to distribute. From a single floppy, you could boot up the machine into a graphical OS with a file manager, web browser, tcp/ip, etc. I thought it was an amazing feat. I, too, hope further work goes into a desktop-focused QNX for lower-spec machines or PDA's. It could rock! Wed, 12 Sep 2007 15:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (fretinator) Comments RE[3]: Big nothing http://osnews.com/thread?270615 http://osnews.com/thread?270615

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]) Wed, 12 Sep 2007 15:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Tyr.) Comments RE: All I know is... http://osnews.com/thread?270618 http://osnews.com/thread?270618

...how cool the floppy was that QNX used to distribute. From a single floppy, you could boot up the machine into a graphical OS with a file manager, web browser, tcp/ip, etc.

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 Wed, 12 Sep 2007 16:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (snozzberry) Comments RE[3]: Well, the idea is welcome but.. http://osnews.com/thread?270621 http://osnews.com/thread?270621

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

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. Wed, 12 Sep 2007 16:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (snozzberry) Comments Worthless, misleading, maybe even insulting http://osnews.com/thread?270624 http://osnews.com/thread?270624 It's a pity, because I was glad when I saw the title of the article. Finally a good open source RT microkernel! Well, the title is about as close to being a LIE as it can be, without quite lying.

This and other "open-sourcish" initiatives and doomed to a well-deserved failure. They completely miss the point about FOSS. Do they really think many open source developers will be interested in contributing for free to a PROPRIETARY, CLOSED-SOURCE project? Have you noticed it's not a bit closer to being open source now than before?

"Dan: Today, QNX Software's revenue comes from a mix of products and services, including runtime royalties, development tool sales, custom engineering, and technical support. None of that will change: Anyone who uses QNX's technology to build commercial products will still need to purchase commercial development seats and runtime redistribution licenses. The big difference is that we now expect more people to choose QNX for their commercial projects. That's because our new model will make it far easier to access, experiment with, and distribute QNX technology. It will also encourage a larger ecosystem of complementary products."

So, they want to have their cake and eat it too, so to speak.

"Dan: We aren't releasing the OS code under an open source license. Rather, we're using a commercial-friendly licensing model that gives developers and customers the option of either keeping their source modifications or donating them back to the community. If fact, we're providing three licenses: one for commercial users, one for noncommercial users, and one for QNX technology partners. When you register, you identify which license is appropriate to your interests. For instance, if you're a student, academic faculty member, or hobbyist developer, you choose the noncommercial license, which provides access to development tools and runtime components free of charge."

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'm sorry to say, I wish them a resounding failure. Wed, 12 Sep 2007 16:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (wannabe geek) Comments RE: Worthless, misleading, maybe even insulting http://osnews.com/thread?270626 http://osnews.com/thread?270626 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. Wed, 12 Sep 2007 16:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda) Comments RE[2]: Good news. http://osnews.com/thread?270627 http://osnews.com/thread?270627 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. Wed, 12 Sep 2007 17:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (johkra) Comments RE[3]: Good news. http://osnews.com/thread?270630 http://osnews.com/thread?270630

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. Wed, 12 Sep 2007 17:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda) Comments RE[2]: Worthless, misleading, maybe even insulting http://osnews.com/thread?270633 http://osnews.com/thread?270633 "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. Wed, 12 Sep 2007 17:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (wannabe geek) Comments RE[4]: Good news. http://osnews.com/thread?270638 http://osnews.com/thread?270638 Maybe cdm will update KillerIRC

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 17:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (zizban) Comments RE: Nice, but no help http://osnews.com/thread?270642 http://osnews.com/thread?270642 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. Wed, 12 Sep 2007 18:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (renhoek) Comments RE[2]: Worthless, misleading, maybe even insulting http://osnews.com/thread?270644 http://osnews.com/thread?270644 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. Wed, 12 Sep 2007 18:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (dylansmrjones) Comments RE[3]: Worthless, misleading, maybe even insulting http://osnews.com/thread?270649 http://osnews.com/thread?270649 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 Wed, 12 Sep 2007 19:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (wannabe geek) Comments RE[3]: Worthless, misleading, maybe even insulting http://osnews.com/thread?270650 http://osnews.com/thread?270650

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

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. Wed, 12 Sep 2007 19:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (SReilly) Comments RE: Nice, but no help http://osnews.com/thread?270654 http://osnews.com/thread?270654 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. Wed, 12 Sep 2007 20:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (dekernel) Comments This is free software. GPL not required http://osnews.com/thread?270679 http://osnews.com/thread?270679 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. Wed, 12 Sep 2007 21:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (npang) Comments RE: This is free software. GPL not required http://osnews.com/thread?270685 http://osnews.com/thread?270685 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 Wed, 12 Sep 2007 21:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (wannabe geek) Comments RE[2]: This is free software. GPL not required http://osnews.com/thread?270690 http://osnews.com/thread?270690 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. Wed, 12 Sep 2007 21:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda) Comments RE[3]: This is free software. GPL not required http://osnews.com/thread?270712 http://osnews.com/thread?270712 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. Wed, 12 Sep 2007 21:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (wannabe geek) Comments RE[4]: This is free software. GPL not required http://osnews.com/thread?270713 http://osnews.com/thread?270713 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.

You can do whatever the hell you want with the code - you just can't commercially exploit it.

It is not Free Software as defined by the FSF. It's not open source software as defined by OSI. But, it it can still be called open source by another defintion - namely that of being able to do whatever the hell you want with it, except sell it.

Like I said before, OSI and FSF haven't patented the definition of open source. Wed, 12 Sep 2007 21:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda) Comments RE[2]: This is free software. GPL not required http://osnews.com/thread?270720 http://osnews.com/thread?270720 You're right. I was wrong. I was blinded by the Apache 2.0 license. I didn't read answer 7 closely enough. Wed, 12 Sep 2007 22:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (npang) Comments RE[5]: This is free software. GPL not required http://osnews.com/thread?270740 http://osnews.com/thread?270740 "You can do whatever the hell you want with the code - you just can't commercially exploit it."

What's exactly to "commercially exploit it"? Can you set up a business with 100 workstations running QNX without their permission? I don't think so. What sets Free Sofware apart from other licensing models is that you can effectively avoid vendor lock-in. I couldn't find their exact licensing terms in their website, but it seem to be designed to keep vendor lock-in as a business model. Hence, it's fundamentally different from Free Sofware as defined by FSF, which is by far the most widely accepted definition, and calling it the same is arguably misleading. "free for personal use" would be acceptable, but in any case it's a VERY different licensing model. Wed, 12 Sep 2007 22:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (wannabe geek) Comments RE: Big nothing http://osnews.com/thread?270752 http://osnews.com/thread?270752 "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/ Wed, 12 Sep 2007 22:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (wannabe geek) Comments RE[3]: This is free software. GPL not required http://osnews.com/thread?270760 http://osnews.com/thread?270760 That also happened to me at first. I think it's a rather confusing announcement

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 23:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (wannabe geek) Comments RE: Wooah! Cool! http://osnews.com/thread?270767 http://osnews.com/thread?270767 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. Wed, 12 Sep 2007 23:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (samad) Comments RE[2]: Worthless, misleading, maybe even insulting http://osnews.com/thread?270770 http://osnews.com/thread?270770 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 Wed, 12 Sep 2007 23:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (dylansmrjones) Comments This is so cool http://osnews.com/thread?270784 http://osnews.com/thread?270784 Now if someone just turned it into the next gen. amigaos/beos =P Thu, 13 Sep 2007 00:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (aliquis) Comments RE: No problems about it now being GPL http://osnews.com/thread?270785 http://osnews.com/thread?270785 "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 Thu, 13 Sep 2007 00:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (aliquis) Comments RE[2]: Wooah! Cool! http://osnews.com/thread?270849 http://osnews.com/thread?270849 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. Thu, 13 Sep 2007 06:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (tchristney) Comments The best announcement of the year! http://osnews.com/thread?270900 http://osnews.com/thread?270900 The Hebrew year that is... (It started yesterday).

I have programming experience on Linux, FreeBSD, BeOS, Solaris, AmigaOS, VxWorks, Windows and QNX - One thing I can tell you is that QNX is a top quality OS and the opening of the source code is on par (in terms of importance to the industry) with the opening of the Solaris source code. Thu, 13 Sep 2007 09:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Tropheus) Comments Hooray!! At long last, we can http://osnews.com/thread?271337 http://osnews.com/thread?271337 finally finish HURD!! :-D Fri, 14 Sep 2007 19:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (bannor99) Comments I'll survive ! http://osnews.com/thread?271350 http://osnews.com/thread?271350 Well, will it revive the NC interrest of 6.1 ? 6.2 had more hardware support, but became limited to a 30 days usage... Will http://www.qnxzone.com/ reopen ? Fri, 14 Sep 2007 20:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Kochise) Comments