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very, very, VERY long tunnel...very, very, VERY long tunnel...Posted Nov 14, 2008 21:52 UTC (Fri) by roelofs (guest, #2599)Parent article: NLUUG/ELCE: Embedded devices and free software He does see "some very dim light at the end of a very far tunnel" ... Sadly, I think that's the most realistic statement he made. While we all know about the benefits of the fully open-source model, the value proposition for hardware vendors will have to be demonstrated in a very visible way before they'll switch from their current business model--which involves relatively rapid, relatively minor iterations on the hardware, both to track the cheapest components and also to make secondary manufacturers and end users feel like they have to keep buying new hardware. Without a very public, very popular trailblazer kicking sand in their faces and showing real benefits of the same-hardware, software-centric FLOSS approach, they'll continue to focus on the costs, which Harald sort of glossed over. (Specifically, the time and engineering costs of working with the community; the IT costs of poking holes in their firewalls and setting up external servers; the legal costs of covering their horribly conservative asses; the competitive costs of telegraphing their plans to competitors; etc.) I'd also point out that, if it didn't happen in the relatively golden period we just experienced, there's no way in hell it's going to happen in the current/coming economic environment. "Experimental" projects like a move to open source are always the first to get whacked, but it won't stop with a mere shutdown of the projects; there will be round after round of layoffs and all manner of associated ugliness to come. Not that I'm pessimistic or anything. ;-) Greg
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very, very, VERY long tunnel... Posted Nov 14, 2008 23:28 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
that's one way of looking at it, the otherwayis that since the budgets are so tight thecompanies that do work well with the community and lower their long-term costs will gain more of an advantage.
a lot of this is short-term vs long-term efficiancies.
if an embedded company uses up-to-date versions fthe software, it's easier for them to switch components as those other components are more likely to be supported already.
many companies have trouble taking the long view, but not all
very, very, VERY long tunnel... Posted Nov 16, 2008 13:54 UTC (Sun) by Tet (subscriber, #5433) [Link] the IT costs of poking holes in their firewalls and setting up external serversAgreed, but that's something we can fix. There's no reason why we couldn't have a community operated public development infrastructure that embedded vendors can use. Something like sourceforge/savannah might work, if they started offering public git trees, but they've been around for ages, and haven't so far persuaded many vendors to head down that route. I suspect something tailored to the needs of the embedded world might prove more enticing.
very, very, VERY long tunnel... Posted Nov 17, 2008 2:14 UTC (Mon) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
there are several places available for hosting git trees, github is the one that comes to mind, but I know that there are a few others.
the only holes that would need to be poked are the ones nessasary to sync to the external repository.
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