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RE: Re: Is eCos project still alive?


Hi Alex,

I'm sorry for the rather caustic response you've received from this mailing
list.
 
If you are interested in eCos for your application, it sounds as though your
best bet would be to get a dialogue going with eCosCentric.  I'm not
personally aware of it being used in safety critical applications, although I
don't see any inherent reason that it couldn't (possibly with some work) get
that certification.

At this time, there isn't really a formalized release process for the CVS
version of eCos.  You will get this from eCosCentric though.  They provide
tested and supported releases.  This is a service that you pay for though.  I
would expect that it will be difficult to find an open source OS that's fully
supported and tested for little to no money as the developers need to earn a
living.

Not all of the commercial RTOS's have their source as unavailable or have
heinous license fees (Nucleus for example).  By nature, most have to provide
some level of source to support a wide variety of platforms.  The fees for
commercial RTOS licensing aren't typically that terrible, especially if the
volumes are high.

It would be nice to have check pointed releases of eCos, but without
volunteers to do the testing, etc. it would be rather difficult.  The
community is much smaller in comparison to the Linux kernel.

--Chris

-----Original Message-----
From: ecos-discuss-owner@ecos.sourceware.org
[mailto:ecos-discuss-owner@ecos.sourceware.org] On Behalf Of Grant Edwards
Sent: 13 December 2007 14:33
To: ecos-discuss@sources.redhat.com
Subject: [ECOS] Re: Is eCos project still alive?

On 2007-12-13, Loginov Alexander <aloginov@asmpt.com> wrote:

> .........
>> Because that's the last time somebody paid developers to do the
>> work involved in a public "release".
>
> Thanks for your comments. Now a bit clearer why the releases
> are not available. But it is quite strange: there is
> eCosCentric but no releases.

There are releases.  That's what eCosPro is.

> Normally the commercial companies that are at the back of the
> open-source project, do this job. Check RTEMS for example. 

No thanks, I'm not going to check RTEMS.

> ........
>> If you don't want to hear answers, then don't ask questions.
>
> Irrelevant note. Not all the phrases are to be understood
> directly. There are idioms in each language. That was one of
> them. Don't take it out of the context. In that context it
> meant: "I don't think so" if you wish
>
> ........
>> Utter bullshit.  They do have bugs, but so do releases. Neither
>> is "supposed to have bugs".
>
> My mistake, I meant to say "expected to have bugs". Here is
> the standard note from a standard open-source project CVS
> tree: "...the CVS code is always moving in features and
> stability. While very attempt is made to keep the CVS head
> working on all targets, but there are no any guarantees". 

I wasn't aware that there was a standard for open-source
projects.

> .......
>> Bah. Nobody intentionally checks in bugs.
>
> Depends. In the area of safety-critical systems, it is a
> standard debugging methodology: you intentionally introduce
> bugs in the systems to see how it can recover itself . 

You don't check them into CVS.

> ... ...
>> There are no "stable releases" of Linux any more.  Active
>> development is being done in the "stable" tree.  There are no
>> more stable and development versions of Linux like there used
>> to be.
>
> Linux itself - yes. But not its distros. The new releases are normally
> produced every 3-6 months.

If you want a stable release of eCos then use eCosPro and stop
whinging at us.

> ... ...
>> On the contrary, we are all from the world of commercial
>> products development.  That's what eCos is used for: developing
>> commercial products.  I've been using eCos to develop
>> commercial products for 7+ years, and the lack of "releases"
>> hasn't been even the least bit of a problem.
>
> That is your personal experience and your personal area of
> expertise in particular commercial product area. Products that
> are expected to have high reliability standards are rarely
> developed from CVS software snapshots.

Products that have high reliability standards do their own
testing and "releasing".  They don't depend on the "releases"
of open-source packages to be bug-free.

>> If you feel you're not capable of working from a CVS repository
>> and really want a "released" version, then that's what eCosPro
>> is: http://www.ecoscentric.com/ecos/ecospro.shtml
>
> Thanks. I have already checked it. Definitely, if we stick to eCos we
> will buy the support from eCosCentric.

I'm glad to hear it.

>> Perhaps one of those RTOSes will meet your privilege
>> management requirement better than eCos.
>
> Unfortunately, they are either too expensive (the royalty fees
> would cost us thousand or even millions of dollars) and most
> of them normally don't provide source code. If they do provide
> it, then it costs another hundreds of thousands.

Releases cost money.

> By the way, do you now any more-or-less free RTOS that
> provides support for privilege levels and process protection?

Nope, I can't afford the dollars or watts for processors that
have those sorts of features.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  I'm a fuschia
bowling
                                  at               ball somewhere in Brittany
                               visi.com            


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--
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