Paolo Mantegazza RIP

[Posted January 10, 2025 by corbet]

We have just now received word of the passing of Paolo Mantegazza, the driving force behind the Real Time Application Interface project and a key figure in the development of realtime Linux.

Paolo used to describe himself as a simple practitioner of software development, one of whose missions was to contribute a free real-time system his students could use, study and improve for their research work at the university, welcoming others to join. Many Linux users and businesses owe him a lot, because under his leadership, the RTAI project has always defended the freedom of developers to implement real-time systems, particularly at times when it was threatened. His fierce will for RTAI served the Xenomai project, as well as others.

He will be missed. (LWN interviewed Mantegazza in 2001).

Clarification?

Posted Jan 11, 2025 21:40 UTC (Sat) by Heretic_Blacksheep (guest, #169992) [Link] (2 responses)

"the RTAI project has always defended the freedom of developers to implement real-time systems, particularly at times when it was threatened."

Is there a specific case where this was an actual problem or is this just a general statement about keeping software development open with a freedom to experiment? I'm not sure I ever heard of governments or other organizations attacking real time computing projects because they were implemented as a real time paradigm as opposed to general purpose or other concepts.

Clarification?

Posted Jan 11, 2025 22:07 UTC (Sat) by willy (subscriber, #9762) [Link] (1 responses)

RTLinux had a patent, and there was considerable FUD flying about whether the RTLinux patent covered what RTAI was doing. There's a letter from Even Moglen somewhere on the RTAI website.

Clarification?

Posted Jan 12, 2025 1:45 UTC (Sun) by ebiederm (subscriber, #35028) [Link]

I was curious what the stauts of this all is so I looked it up. The summary is the patent expired in 2017 so it is no longer a concern.

Here are the details from RTAI, the FSF, and the patent itself.

https://www.rtai.org/RTAI-and-the-RT-Linux-patent.html

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/rtlinux-patent.en.html

https://patents.google.com/patent/US5995745A/en