LynuxWorks strikes back - sort of [LWN.net]

LynuxWorks has sent out a press release responding to the Green Hills attack on the use of Linux in the military. "The rapid proliferation of open standards software continues to illicit responses from software vendors attempting to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) as they find their business models threatened by the global open standards movement. Vendors have attempted to thwart Linux through lawsuits and legal actions and, most recently, are fueling the FUD surrounding Linux and the security threat it poses to our nation's defense systems." Do note the careful wording: this PR is all about "open standards" and says nothing about free (or open source) software; these people could just as well be pushing UnixWare.

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LynuxWorks strikes back - sort of

Posted Apr 14, 2004 14:44 UTC (Wed) by maney (subscriber, #12630) [Link]

I don't know how much you want to go reading fine distinctions into this based on word choice when the first sentence contains something as uncareful as that illicit where elicit was clearly the word they were trying to use.

LynuxWorks strikes back - sort of

Posted Apr 14, 2004 15:23 UTC (Wed) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link]

Agreed. It would be much better from the PR standpoint if the FUD about USA security was countered in correct English by somebody born in the United States. I doubt that Mr. Singh and Mr. Yodaiken would qualify for that task, with all my respect to them. Not that they shouldn't express their opinions, but I would rather hear from Red Hat, Novell and IBM executives.

LynuxWorks strikes back - sort of

Posted Apr 14, 2004 17:20 UTC (Wed) by rjw (guest, #10415) [Link]

Would somebody born in the UK, Ireland, Canada, NZ, Austrailia, South Africa, or one of the other nations where English is a first language be good enough for you?

LynuxWorks strikes back - sort of

Posted Apr 14, 2004 21:19 UTC (Wed) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link]

Definitely not. Have you seen the Green Hills press release at all? Or you posted a quick reply without any knowledge of the subject?

LynuxWorks strikes back - sort of

Posted Apr 14, 2004 15:36 UTC (Wed) by donstuart (subscriber, #4550) [Link]

Are you sure they weren't just being clever? You could view it as a bit of a pun.

Don

LynuxWorks strikes back - sort of

Posted Apr 14, 2004 18:27 UTC (Wed) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link]

Bah... they can't even spell Linux correctly.

LynuxWorks strikes back - sort of

Posted Apr 19, 2004 11:51 UTC (Mon) by wookey (subscriber, #5501) [Link]

The reason LynuxWorks go on about Open Standards, and not Free Software is that their business model is to push their proprietary LynxOS as being a 'real RTOS' that is 'Linux compatible'. So they've put a lot of effort into establishing a sort of POSIX standard for linux apps (via the Embedded Linux Consortium) to use so that they can replace the kernel with LynxOS.

They also have a very bad reputation in the arm Linux community for keeping their BlueCat linux patches to themselves and generally not doing a very good job of working with the community, to the extent that anyone asking questions about running a BlueCat Linux kernel on a device is told 'go talk to Lynuxworks - we don't know how to help you'. This may have improved recently, I don't know. This is sad because they are doing useful work.

Of course, they are at least supporting Linux and giving customers the choice of a free or proprietary kernel that can easily be swapped which could be viewed as a good thing, but from where I'm standing they give off an unhealthy aura of 'take without giving' and not really believing in Free Software, and I certainly recommond other Embedded solution providers with a better attitude when asked.