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NLUUG/ELCE: Embedded devices and free softwareNLUUG/ELCE: Embedded devices and free softwarePosted Nov 13, 2008 10:23 UTC (Thu) by NAR (subscriber, #1313)Parent article: NLUUG/ELCE: Embedded devices and free software So, the vendors compete on the basis of the features their proprietary competitors implement Wow, what an evil thing to do... If, instead, they used FOSS to its fullest, they could outcompete the proprietary vendors in ways that could not be matched—except by using FOSS. In ways like...?
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NLUUG/ELCE: Embedded devices and free software Posted Nov 13, 2008 12:14 UTC (Thu) by njh (subscriber, #4425) [Link]
Software development is a cost center for a hardware company. Employ a couple of good coders to work on and publicly integrate support for your hardware in the mainline kernel and you get a best-of-breed operating system for your platform, with no per-copy royalties to pay, and with thousands of volunteer coders around the world constantly improving it and adding features.
NLUUG/ELCE: Embedded devices and free software Posted Nov 13, 2008 14:01 UTC (Thu) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link] Currently this "best-of-breed" operating system drains my battiers twice as fast Windows - I'm not sure that thousands of volunteer coders around the world constantly improving it and adding features would offset this little problem. Maybe the lack of royalties might help, but employing a couple of good coders isn't exactly cheap either.
NLUUG/ELCE: Embedded devices and free software Posted Nov 13, 2008 14:50 UTC (Thu) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]
Great example.
This issue has received attention. Then Intel provided powertop. Which exposed issues all over the place that people started fixing. I think that this eventually amounted to thousands coders helping to reduce the drain of batteries.
NLUUG/ELCE: Embedded devices and free software Posted Nov 13, 2008 20:35 UTC (Thu) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link]
Yeah, they are working on it. Maybe some day it will have some results as well. I mean it's just enough to read LWN: there was an article about "sound in Linux - it's a mess" a couple of weeks ago. There are problems with graphics support (either no free software driver or the performance of the hardware is "modest"). Pretty much problems everywhere the user looks at. And these problems are not too recent either. So I can understand the companies in the embedded business if they fail to see the advantages of the free software model (except the price tag, which with the support costs might not be that good).
NLUUG/ELCE: Embedded devices and free software Posted Nov 15, 2008 11:26 UTC (Sat) by jospoortvliet (subscriber, #33164) [Link]
That's exactly the point of working with the community. We DO have results
in the latest kernel & userspace tools, but because vendors don't work with the community and use outdated kernels, they won't profit from it for the foreseeable future. The benefit of working with the community would be gaining new features faster. More innovation, shorter time to market. Exactly what they could need to outperform the proprietary competition!
NLUUG/ELCE: Embedded devices and free software Posted Nov 14, 2008 0:24 UTC (Fri) by tao (subscriber, #17563) [Link]
Yes, but the makers of the hardware you're running the best of breed software on probably hasn't done what the article suggest either (that is, hired a couple of developers to fix the support for their own hardware).
How many kernel developers does Lenovo employ that submits patches to reduce power consumption for their laptops? How many Apple-employees actively submit fixes to the Linux-kernel? ... You get my drift.
NLUUG/ELCE: Embedded devices and free software Posted Nov 14, 2008 0:32 UTC (Fri) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link]
Well, and on my Thinkpad T41 Linux has a 25% longer battery life than Windows XP (5 hours vs. 4 hours).
What do we learn from your and my observation? Not much, they are just isolated data points. Maybe that some devices are better supported than others. But that's actually the same in Windows, too.
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