Return to BSD News archive
Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!comp.vuw.ac.nz!ak.netlink.co.nz!auckland.ac.nz!news.hn.netlink.co.nz!status.gen.nz!news.express.co.nz!manawatu.planet.co.nz!manawatu.gen.nz!unix.triton.net!news-out.internetmci.com!news.internetMCI.com!pull-feed.internetmci.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!newsfeed.direct.ca!nntp.portal.ca!van-bc!n1van.istar!van.istar!west.istar!ott.istar!istar.net!gateway.qnx.com!not-for-mail From: doug@qnx.com (Doug Santry) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Embedded FreeBSD Date: 21 Jan 1997 13:10:32 -0500 Organization: QNX Software Systems Lines: 73 Message-ID: <5c30qo$4in@qnx.com> References: <32B744C0.2DA9@wdc.net> <5c08m3$dvk@qnx.com> <5c14ih$7nn@uriah.heep.sax.de> <5c2rm9$fjs@helena.MT.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: qnx.com Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:34290 In article <5c2rm9$fjs@helena.MT.net>, Nate Williams <nate@see.my.signature> wrote: >In article <5c14ih$7nn@uriah.heep.sax.de>, >J Wunsch <joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de> wrote: >>doug@qnx.com (Doug Santry) wrote: > >[ >Before I go off, I want to state for the record that I *highly* respect >Doug, Dan, and the rest of the folks at QNX. QNX is a great product, and >has alot of features that the we the free *nix folks could use, and some >stuff we could learn from. >] I think the free *nix packages do everything they are meant to do and they do it damn well. I think QNX and BSD just make different tradeoffs to accomplish different things. But it blows my mind that Net/3 etc are free. Not a day goes by where I use FreeBSD, tell myself it free, and realise that Win95 is $189 or whatever, and doesn't even come close to power. I mean, while at school, I would dial in to a Sun server or go on campus till Jolitz produced 386BSD and I put it on my machine and it *blew* my mind! I was able to do real work at home! Boy, the memories(wipe away a tear). I learnt more about Unix in that time...it was beautiful. At that time PC Unix was totally expensive(SCO, Sun's interactive unix) or annoyingly crippled(IBM's 16 bit AIX). Woah, I seem to be taking a trip down memory lane, better pull over look for the on-ramp to the info-s-highway again. >>> We don't distribute our source because our customers don't need it. >> >>That's always easy to claim. :) >> >>Well, just curious: did any of your customers ever ask you about >>getting the source? If so, what has been your reaction? > >I know as a student I talked with Dan Hildebrand about getting some >copies` of QNX for 'educational' purposes. I was told that source was >not available, which seems silly since the best education a student can >get (IMHO) is studying well documented source. Agreed. But it wouldn't be very long till our source was pasted by some student all over the Internet. You can still do very significant things without the source as we have a very well designed micro-kernel that allows you to do powerful things without being in the kernel. So students could do some interesting things. However, if it is the workings of a micro-kernel you want to teach then there are plenty of research kernels out there that you can grab. I actually find UBC's Tui *very* interesting. Lots of cool ideas... >However, recently a QNX developer informed me that he had access to >source, which I found ironic given the very obvious statement that >source wasn't distributed to customers. Well, I won't say it is impossible but I'd be surprised. There are always folks telling stories to make themselves sound important. I'm just a developer here and have no authority over stuff like that but I do know we don't hand out our source like cookies. >In any case, I would *love* to get a copy of QNX to play with, with our >withoug source. But, spending a couple kilobucks to get a development >environment as an individual means I don't make a house payment, so it's >not going to happen anytime soon. ;( If you are a student or professor then there is an educational discount. Actually, I don't even know what we sell it for. I'm happy just to hack away here in my cubicle and let the business guys worry about that sort of thing. DJS