[ILUG] How much is Linux used?

[Bryan O'Donoghue]

francois maillard wrote:

>  I agree with Ole when he speaks about built-in Linux products... as an 
> exemple, many firewall/network devices run Linux OS's (Linksys, which has 
> been buyed by Cisco is quite well introduced in this market -- even though I 
> had bad experiences with Linksys products ;).)
> Another appliance are industry's robots... every single Peugot-Citroen robot 
> is Unix/Linux based.
> My girlfriend works in realtime research and she's never seen an appliance 
> running Windows (I had been deseperatly trying to make her use Linux... she 
> finally had to).

Certainly, Linux for situations where development houses might have used
VxWorks, QNX or <some fringe random OS> may be increasingly popular in
coming years... however, I see some obstacles and some issues that need
to be addressed, for this to come about.

Firstly "wince" ... I mean Windows CE and the propensity to perhaps
replace Symbian/In house OS, with wince instead of Linux. I seem to
remember one of the Nordic phone companies making noises about wincing,
because said company wanted to run the Windows media player (or was it
Flash v2) ? I can't remember.

Secondly the likes of RTLinux, where the Real Time Linux "laboratory"
claims to have a patent on running Linux as a task under a real time
kernel... perhaps a supreme example of how patents can undermine FOSS.
In this domain you have quite a few propiatery Leechs, selling loosely
rebranded Linux, with add on propiatery extensions. RTLabs, Arabella,
there are probably more players/leeches.

Thirdly the propensity of people who do use Linux & FOSS not to comply
with the licensing terms of the software (think CherryOS), Linksys
initially and that other crowd, who had an injunction placed on them in
Germany recently, for violating the terms of the iptables license (name
escapes me).

Lastly, people being scared away from using FOSS/Linux, because of
licensing and/or other blinkered non understanding.

I note Nokia has a new totally Open Source phone based on Linux coming
out soon... for the end user though, I'm not sure what that really gets
them, either your phone works or it doesn't... it shouldn't matter if
the phone runs Montavista Linux or not... Granted you might keep your
developers happy running your phone on Linux, but, it's a non sequitur
in terms of actual sales. Probably what will end up happening is the
VxWorks, QNXs, Symbians will loose out to Linux based on cost and
available driver/protocol stacks and to Wince based on obfuscated
marketoid decisions.

Also, it's worth noting, for houses like Trolltech who dual license Qt,
it's emphatically *not* in their interests for totally Open appliance
platforms, since, they'd get no juicy licensing fees from the likes of
the Zarus people.

/hugs the KDE users.

-- 
"Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover
everybody's face but their own" -- Johathan Swift