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Red Hat’s eCos: Going, Going, Gone


Hi Eddie

I just read your article
http://sdtimes.com/news/096/emb1.htm
and was quite astounded by one of the facts you claim - "1998 – Gary Thomas develops the Embedded Cygnus Operating System (eCos)."


This is *totally* incorrect. The original architect of eCos was Nick Garnett who developed eCos in 1996, along with the original team of Bart Veer and Paul Beskeen. The first release of eCos was in 1997, at least a year before Gary Thomas joined Cygnus in 1998. Gary was approximately the 6th member to join the eCos team around the time Cygnus first released eCos publically.

Gary (CC'ed) remains to be an eCos maintainer (all eCos maintainers CC'ed) and still contributes to eCos. I am sure Gary will confirm everything above.

There are also further inaccuracies within your article. eCosCentric was founded by the entire Red Hat eCos team (of which I was manager) that left Red Hat. This was not 4 but 9 people, including Gary Thomas who later left eCosCentric at the end of 2002 for his own personal reasons.

In addition, you have also mis-quoted me which I find surprising since you mentioned at the end of our call that you had taped our conversation. Of note I said I could not comment on whether Red Hat were looking for buyers for eCos, but could comment that I knew a few companies who were interested in purchasing eCos from Red Hat since some of those companies had also approached the former Red Hat eCos staff.

My last comment was also taken out of context since I was referring to the alternative for eCos of setting up a NFP and generating revenue through the sales of eCos licenses that could be ploughed back into the community. This is not an option with the FSF route.

I trust that you will correct these errors in your article or at least print an addendum.

Regards
-- Alex

Managing Director / CEO                           eCosCentric Limited
http://www.ecoscentric.com/              The eCos and RedBoot experts

Visit us at Embedded World, Nürnberg          17-19 Feb, Stand 12-449
and at Embedded Systems Conference, SFO,  30 Mar - 1 Apr, Booth #2527


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