Re: Wake up to reality

At Mon, 29 May 2006 16:05:32 -0700,
Michael Sierchio wrote:
> 
> shilo layston wrote:
> 
>  > Poul-Henning Kamp sez...
> 
>  >> FreeBSD is a great operating system for embedded use and people all over
>  >> the world use this to their advantage.
>  >
>  > Judging on what I have heard over my career in embedded development,
>  > *BSD (let alone FreeBSD) is almost completely unknown in the embedded market.
>  > WindRiver, GreenHills, QNX, ... and possibly some Linuxs are the owners
>  > of that marketplace.  [Maybe the notable exception is Juniper Networks;
>  > I've heard they're a big BSD shop]
> 
> If you had the slightest idea what you were talking about, you'd know
> the provenance of WindRiver and VxWorks and the embedded OS in Brocade
> fiber channel switches, etc. etc. are all BSD.

Sort of, but not really.  Having spent 5 years at Wind River a lot of
that code is not related to BSD, but the network stack was and likely
still is, so it really depends on what part of the system you're
talking about.  Interrupts, mutexes, and all the other core, low level
parts of VxWorks that people in the embedded world care about has
nothing to do with BSD.

The important part for us, and I think that Robert brought this out
quite well, is how we compare, and what we have to do, in order to
compete in that market and to make it easier for embedded developers
to choose and use BSD.  I'll be incorporating some of his suggestions
into the Embedded FreeBSD web site I'm building right now.

Later,
George