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At one point I think QNX was an 'open engineering' project - that is, sharing design and development communications, but not accepting source contributions. Wa
by rch 11y ago
At one point I think QNX was an 'open engineering' project - that is, sharing design and development communications, but not accepting source contributions.
Was there anything useful gleaned from that approach, and would companies not able to share code be willing to try something similar?
- jacquesm 11y agoIt appeared to be very much a half-hearted attempt, quite probably to be seen to be more 'open' without taking any risk or making an actual commitment.
- david-given 11y agoIt was a look-but-don't-touch license, and source was only available for parts of the system (I don't think you got the microkernel secret sauce). After QNX was bought by Blackberry, all the community features quietly evaporated. Here is a good example of the new, caring, Blackberry side of QNX: http://community.qnx.com/sf/wiki/do/viewPage/projects.community/wiki/UpdatedQNXSourceAccessPolicyFAQ http://community.qnx.com/sf/wiki/do/viewPage/projects.commun... Foundry27, their hobbyist community site, is now a desolate wasteland.
- KMag 11y agoI was always a bit surprised that I never heard of an effort to create a GPL'd QNX clone. Do you think that L4 has more conceptual purity with performance and stability close enough to QNX?
- david-given 11y agoI've never used L4, sorry. But I do know that the two operating systems are completely unlike each other. L4 is a bare-bones hypervisor task/switcher kernel. QNX is a complete Unix, which is (to me) where all the value lies. How L4 compares with the QNX kernel, I don't have the knowledge to comment on.