Andy Waddell wrote:
>
> I'll comment on the "lack of support" issue because it's one I had to answer
> here as well. I just finished a proof of concept for running Linux as an
> embedded OS on our custom board. These are Elan Sc400's with 32M RAM and 8M
> of flash. I've worked with vxWorks, WinCE, and others in the past, and I
> have to say that the amount of support I got from this mailing list alone
> was better than I've ever experienced from a commercial entity. And that's
> not to mention the rest of the Linux world when it comes to general Linux
> support. If you look back though some of the old mail, you'll see what I
> mean. Also, of course, nothing beats having the code! The proof of concept
> went very well and I think it's safe to say that Linux will be my default
> choice going ahead for high-end embedded work.
>
While it is true for us sw engineers that the mailing lists in the Linux
community provides excellent support this might be a hard sell to old
fashioned managers and CEOs. They basically want somebody to yell at when
things go bad and sue if things turn really nasty. (Yeah... go ahead and
sue a large corporation for bugs you find in their SW. Good luck ;-!.)
For management I use the following two arguments:
A:
1. You buy os from X and X will give you support. If X feel they don't
want to or have no time you get no support.
2. You use Linux and there are quite a few companies out there that
you can buy support from ranging from Red Hat to small consultant
companies. You don't like your support, you go somewhere else.
(this is an open source phenomena and is true for most open
source os:es)
B:
* You find a bug in a "commercial" os will typically have once choice:
work your way around it. (Yes, in theory you could ask the vendor
to fix it and in some cases he will do that within a reasonable time).
* You find a bug in Linux you have two choices: Work around it or fix
it. You can fix it because you have the source and support from
mailing lists.
(Please note that this is an argument for management, they won't
notice the possible flaw)
Then there is of course the question if Linux is good enough for your
specific application.
/Fredric
--
Fredric Fredricson [EMAIL PROTECTED] MYDATA automation AB
Manager System SW R&D http://www.mydata.se Adolfsbergsvagen 11
phone: +46 8 475 55 21 S-161 70 BROMMA
fax: +46 8 475 55 01 SWEDEN
--
To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
with the command "unsubscribe linux-embedded" in the message body.
For more information, see <http://waste.org/mail/linux-embedded>.
