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My question remains, would this money have been better spent in buying QNX? Could an open-source QNX accomplish all of Google's goals? Given that QNX cannot b
by chasil 4y ago
My question remains, would this money have been better spent in buying QNX?
Could an open-source QNX accomplish all of Google's goals?
Given that QNX cannot be killed, and the cost to Google in attempting to do so (or enacting major change for legacy customers) would be catastrophic...
Why not buy a working microkernel? Are there other commercial microkernels that are more attractive?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/QNX https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/QNX
Maybe Samsung should buy it, and put themselves in the driver's seat on Android. (They did buy Joyent, and SmartOS seems fine.)
- busterarm 4y agoBlackBerry isn't selling it. It's the only active line of business that they really have anymore. QNX is in 215 million cars.
- jpgvm 4y agoJust buy BB then?
- chasil 4y agoAgreed.
- xg15 4y ago"I just bought the airline. It seemed neater."
- busterarm 4y agoIt's too expensive for what they'd get out of the deal. Buying BB would cost them between 3B-4B$. They've made less than 10 $B acquisitions, with Motorola Mobility being the most expensive at 12B and was for patents. I think if Google acquired BB for the QNX business that they wouldn't give it adequate attention and would run it into the ground.
- DoingIsLearning 4y agoDo you know what is there business model? As in do they charge per unit sold? Or have a flat license? Do you know what would be aprox costs per unit for a startup say for QNX Neutrino?
- WastingMyTime89 4y agoNo one can tell you how much your startup would have to pay apart from BlackBerry themselves. If you want a quote, just contact them.
- raverbashing 4y agoQNX is probably not great and it's a whole bag of hurt to bring it to modern standards of safety and performance/power saving
- pjmlp 4y agoWhat an ironic statement given the deployments in High Integrity Computing, and being the production OS for NVidia's automative software (where GNU/Linux is used for development purposes).
- fooker 4y ago> production OS. Which cars is it deployed on? It would be good to keep an eye on recalls and reported software issues.
- numpad0 4y agoQNX is more like Symbian than Android, a long dead breed of embedded OS used in many un-connected cars. Not going to cause problems at this stage.
- mort96 4y agoBut is QNX in those situations generally connected to the Internet or to arbitrary untrusted devices?
- raverbashing 4y agoGood to know. It seems blackberry is putting the work into these
- webmobdev 4y agoThey could also have considered porting Minix 3 OS - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minix_3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minix_3 - to the mobile platform. It is freely available with far less restrictive license than Linux. The only "production" ready and usable Linux based mobile OS currently is Sailfish OS - https://sailfishos.org/ https://sailfishos.org/ . There is also Tizen OS https://www.tizen.org/ https://www.tizen.org/ and LG's webOS - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebOS , though I don't know how how much Linux support is open to use in these two.
- faragon 4y agoGood point, I would like Google using QNX for their mobile OS, too, because of the Hard Real-Time OS feature. Or keep using Linux, but putting more effort on it, e.g. adding better NDK support, without relying in Java at all, a la iOS.
- WastingMyTime89 4y ago> Good point, I would like Google using QNX for their mobile OS, too, because of the Hard Real-Time OS feature. Why? Everything which needs hard-real time in a phone already does that at the firmware level. I fail to see what is that latency sensible in the rest. If what you want is a faster phone, a hard-real time kernel is not going to give you that. Hard real-time just means you have strong garanties on time of execution (either through return or through failure) it does not necessary means these times are short. Java on Android is not slow anyway.
- freemint 4y agoUser interaction is latency sensitive. In particular on cheaper phones it could make a huge difference.
- rvz 4y ago> Or keep using Linux, but putting more effort on it, e.g. adding better NDK support, without relying in Java at all, a la iOS. Or maybe a clean slate from the mistakes of existing legacy devices and not inheriting the old cruft found in kernels like Linux or in full OSes like QNX that are not designed or optimised for use cases such as smart-devices, IoT, desktops, etc. It seems like Google has had enough of tolerating the giant contraption that has strangled them for years with using Linux in Android, and ChromeOS and would want to purse a new approach similar to Windows, and macOS with Fuchsia and creating an ecosystem of apps written in Dart, and using Flutter.
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