ELC: Trends in embedded Linux

Posted Apr 20, 2008 12:42 UTC (Sun) by man_ls (guest, #15091)
In reply to: ELC: Trends in embedded Linux by giraffedata
Parent article: ELC: Trends in embedded Linux

Ultimately everything can be evaluated as money, but cost should never be the only factor. Take legal risks: not all of them can be reduced to cost; the risk of jail time is a good example. The loss of reputation associated with a lawsuit can be more important than the immediate gains.

In the survey there are two factors above cost: "Availability of free, modifiable source code" and "Development tools". The first represents technological independence, which is hard to quantify as a cost but which can be an important strategical (long-term) factor. The second eases development and is probably a short-to-medium-term concern. If the "cost" factor is meant as the immediate payments due to licensing, then it makes a lot of sense.

ELC: Trends in embedded Linux

Posted Apr 20, 2008 23:16 UTC (Sun) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (2 responses)

I take your point that businesses consider things other than cost, but lost reputation is a poor example, because in business, reputation is money. You spend money to protect your reputation when it would cost less than a damaged reputation would.

Also, I can believe that some respondents read "cost" as "licensing fee," though that's not the way skilled business persons use the term.

Nonetheless, the factors mentioned in the article all seem to be business factors to me. An embedded system maker would reduce them all to some common currency (not necessarily so far as to put numbers in a spreadsheet, but essentially the same), add them up, and take the configuration with the lowest sum.

So I still can't see how to rank the factors against each other. I think at a high enough licensing fee, every respondent would dump an option that has great development tools. So how can you say licensing fee is less important than development tools?

System factors

Posted Apr 21, 2008 6:18 UTC (Mon) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]

I don't know how other companies do it; at my current job they are very brand-conscious, and will go to great lengths to make sure customers are satisfied. Even when it costs the company some money (and against an unquantified loss of reputation). Maybe that is not the best way to do it, but it works for us.

You are right that generic factors cannot be ranked against each other. In this case I believe that factors are to be taken more matter-of-factly: when an embedded developer chooses one OS from those currently in the market, what is more important to them? It seems that in the current crop license fees are not such a differentiator, while development tools are.

Given that some options (such as Debian) are free of licensing costs I take it that a lot of people would be willing to pay for good dev tools as long as code is free. This is only my interpretation; you are right that it can be confusing as to how each factor stacks against the rest.

ELC: Trends in embedded Linux

Posted Apr 24, 2008 5:27 UTC (Thu) by joern (guest, #22392) [Link]

While many things can be reduced to cost, cost is usually trumped by at least two other
factors: loss of job and loss of company.

Each decision has to be made by some individual person.  Remember the "noone got fired for
buying IBM" slogan?  It simply reflects that people don't mind costing the company more if it
saves themselves.

Loss of company trumps even that.  Bad business decisions can be camouflaged, some people have
a personal charisma that allows them to outlive many bad decisions in a company.  But no job
can outlive the company.  So when given a choice of saving the company $$$ with 99% success
rate, while the remaining 1% will break the company's neck, don't expect the savings to be
taken.

One exception is when the company is about to go bankrupt and not saving $$$ would kill the
company anyway.