[ECOS] State of ECOS

[Paul Beskeen]

Hi Stephen,

 >     I came across the following news article on CNET today.
 > It mentions that there's been a cut in the ECOS staff.  Is this a
 > serious change to the ECOS team?

Due to the current economic situation there is indeed some restructuring
taking place within Red Hat's embedded group - as was reported in Red Hats
own earnings press release. I cannot comment officially on all aspects of
this, other than note that the effect on the eCos team members has so far
been limited. Just to be absolutely clear here - Red Hat continues to
promote and support eCos!

Whilst overall the embedded software industry has been taking a hit, eCos'
popularity and usage is growing at a rapid rate. For example, the recent CMP
survey by EE Times (released at the ESC West conference last Thursday)
showed that 3% of current embedded projects are already using eCos, and that
this is expected to grow to 13% this year. The greatest growth of any RTOS,
and effectively putting us on par with WinCE.

This means you should see continued expansion of functionality, growth in
the number of target platforms supported, and additional contributions by
the community as eCos continues to grow.

 > What's Red Hat long term goal for ECOS?  Just curious.

The aim is to become the ubiquitous Open Source RTOS for the deeply embedded
market, and defacto standard for devboard firmware.

To achieve this requires a combination of continued commercial success
delivering development and support contracts, and partnership with the
community. We make everything Open Source, but we do expect that quid pro
quo the community provides their contributions back to us so that all can
benefit. Some people still don't seem to have grokked that last part ;)

Cheers, Paul.

Paul Beskeen
Director of Engineering
Embedded Runtime Group

 > http://news.com.com/2100-1001-864147.html
 >
 >  Red Hat on Tuesday also announced that it has cut staff in "embedded"
 > work, which focuses on selling programming tools, Linux and another
 > open-source operating system called eCos for non-PC computing devices
 > such as network routers.
 >
 > Szulik said the embedded division "did not perform as expected,"
 > blaming the shortfall on economic conditions and the resulting cuts at
 > chip companies that buy embedded products and services. Red Hat
 > acquired its embedded business when it bought programming toolmaker
 > Cygnus Solutions in 1999.
 >
 >
 > Steve



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