4 ms·

Nice article, interesting read. The Neutrino 6.4 version, which was made accessible as "openQNX" to the public, can still be downloaded from e.g. https://githu

by Rochus 1y ago

Nice article, interesting read. The Neutrino 6.4 version, which was made accessible as "openQNX" to the public, can still be downloaded from e.g. https://github.com/vocho/openqnx https://github.com/vocho/openqnx. Here is an AI generated documentation of the source: https://deepwiki.com/vocho/openqnx https://deepwiki.com/vocho/openqnx

skissane 1y ago
> The Neutrino 6.4 version, which was made accessible as "openQNX" to the public From memory: the source was made freely available to anyone who wanted to download it, but not under an open source license, under an individual non-transferable proprietary license; so, legally speaking, anyone who downloaded the source back then (before this program was terminated) is allowed to keep it and use it forever (under some usage restrictions, I forget the details), but they aren't licensed to share it with anyone else. So this is somewhat comparable to all those leaked Microsoft Windows source code repositories on GitHub – technically illegal, but the copyright holder obviously doesn't care to try to stop it (especially ironic for Microsoft, given that as GitHub's owners, they could put an end to it very easily, if they could be bothered)
- Rochus 1y ago
  See https://www.openqnx.com/node/471 https://www.openqnx.com/node/471 "Access to QNX source code is free, but commercial deployments of QNX Neutrino runtime components still require royalties, and commercial developers will continue to pay for QNX Momentics(R) development seats. However, noncommercial developers, academic faculty members, and qualified partners will be given access to QNX development tools and runtime products at no charge."
  - skissane 1y ago
    You are quoting an old press release, not the actual license agreement.
    - Rochus 1y ago
      It clearly states that the company made the referenced source code version available for free.
      - skissane 1y ago
        Yes, but it doesn't tell you the precise legal terms and conditions under which they made it available. Which is the whole point – legally speaking, press releases count for very little, the actual text of the license agreement is far more important.
        Rochus 1y ago
        Are you a lawyer? USA law recognizes promissory estoppel, European laws provide protection by the good faith principle. The press release explicitly states that developers would have access to download "direct from the dev team's subversion repository". The press release also clearly articulates QNX's strategic intent: making source code available to "accelerate innovation," enable developers to "get up to speed more quickly," and allow the community to "learn from QNX's extensive OS experience". The CEO explicitly stated the goal was helping developers "learn the technology". So there is even a strong fair use case for non-commercial educational study.
        skissane 1y ago
        Are you a lawyer? "Promissory estoppel" doesn't work that way... it doesn't mean "I don't need to read the legal fine print, I can just go by my interpretation of the press release"
        Rochus 1y ago
        > "it doesn't mean "I don't need to read the legal fine print, I can just go by my interpretation of the press release" That's not what I said. Anyway, I don't know where you are located, but at least in my country it is no problem to download the code from github for non-commercial educational study, especially given the listed facts. I think we can leave it at that.
supermatt 1y ago
do you know what tool was used to generate that documentation? I would be interested in trying it out on some other repos. EDIT: oh I see, thats what deepwiki itself is
paul_h 1y ago
A more up to date fork? https://github.com/onlinedj/QRV https://github.com/onlinedj/QRV (last commit 4 yrs ago)
- Rochus 1y ago
  Thanks for the hint. vocho/openqnx has about 200 forks, and many seem to have been maintained. The original vocho/openqnx repository is the result of the MONARTIS (MONitoring Application for Real-Time Industrial Systems) project conducted in 2009 at HEIG-VD (https://heig-vd.ch/ https://heig-vd.ch/), Switzerland. The _NTO_VERSION define in <sys/neutrino.h> indicates that it was based on QNX version 6.4.1. I've created my own fork and am currently studying and minimizing it.

by Rochus 1y ago

skissane 1y ago

> The Neutrino 6.4 version, which was made accessible as "openQNX" to the public From memory: the source was made freely available to anyone who wanted to download it, but not under an open source license, under an individual non-transferable proprietary license; so, legally speaking, anyone who downloaded the source back then (before this program was terminated) is allowed to keep it and use it forever (under some usage restrictions, I forget the details), but they aren't licensed to share it with anyone else. So this is somewhat comparable to all those leaked Microsoft Windows source code repositories on GitHub – technically illegal, but the copyright holder obviously doesn't care to try to stop it (especially ironic for Microsoft, given that as GitHub's owners, they could put an end to it very easily, if they could be bothered)

Rochus 1y ago
See https://www.openqnx.com/node/471 https://www.openqnx.com/node/471 "Access to QNX source code is free, but commercial deployments of QNX Neutrino runtime components still require royalties, and commercial developers will continue to pay for QNX Momentics(R) development seats. However, noncommercial developers, academic faculty members, and qualified partners will be given access to QNX development tools and runtime products at no charge."
- skissane 1y ago
  You are quoting an old press release, not the actual license agreement.
  - Rochus 1y ago
    It clearly states that the company made the referenced source code version available for free.
    - skissane 1y ago
      Yes, but it doesn't tell you the precise legal terms and conditions under which they made it available. Which is the whole point – legally speaking, press releases count for very little, the actual text of the license agreement is far more important.
      - Rochus 1y ago
        Are you a lawyer? USA law recognizes promissory estoppel, European laws provide protection by the good faith principle. The press release explicitly states that developers would have access to download "direct from the dev team's subversion repository". The press release also clearly articulates QNX's strategic intent: making source code available to "accelerate innovation," enable developers to "get up to speed more quickly," and allow the community to "learn from QNX's extensive OS experience". The CEO explicitly stated the goal was helping developers "learn the technology". So there is even a strong fair use case for non-commercial educational study.
        skissane 1y ago
        Are you a lawyer? "Promissory estoppel" doesn't work that way... it doesn't mean "I don't need to read the legal fine print, I can just go by my interpretation of the press release"
        Rochus 1y ago
        > "it doesn't mean "I don't need to read the legal fine print, I can just go by my interpretation of the press release" That's not what I said. Anyway, I don't know where you are located, but at least in my country it is no problem to download the code from github for non-commercial educational study, especially given the listed facts. I think we can leave it at that.

supermatt 1y ago

do you know what tool was used to generate that documentation? I would be interested in trying it out on some other repos. EDIT: oh I see, thats what deepwiki itself is

paul_h 1y ago

A more up to date fork? https://github.com/onlinedj/QRV https://github.com/onlinedj/QRV (last commit 4 yrs ago)

Rochus 1y ago
Thanks for the hint. vocho/openqnx has about 200 forks, and many seem to have been maintained. The original vocho/openqnx repository is the result of the MONARTIS (MONitoring Application for Real-Time Industrial Systems) project conducted in 2009 at HEIG-VD (https://heig-vd.ch/ https://heig-vd.ch/), Switzerland. The _NTO_VERSION define in <sys/neutrino.h> indicates that it was based on QNX version 6.4.1. I've created my own fork and am currently studying and minimizing it.