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QNX Newsgroups (Archives) qdn.public.qnxrtp.advocacy
61

Miguel Simon wrote:

Hi Jutta…

First I have to say that QNX Nto is the best thing out there. Like many
others, I am very thankful for the opportunity to experiment with rtp6.2-NC.

Having said that, I would add that the company I work with bought a
developers license for rtp6.1 because I could demonstrate to them that
this made sense.

Miguel, when they own rtp 6.1, what’s the problem to update to 6.2
(Momentics SE) ?


My experience has been that when researches have been
able to try something, they strongly influence the
go-ahead-and-buy-the-lisence issue.

You could and can always do with QNX… a sign for a legal eval.
version shouldn’t be a problem…

Jutta Steinhoff wrote:

Miguel,

are you expecting that all companies are distributing a NC version
of their fully commercial products, software as well as hardware ??

I do not quite understand the point, but I do not expect any thing.

You was complaining that the new NC version is shrinked compared with
the old rtp 6.1 version.

My point is that you can’t expect that companies are ‘distributing’
fully commercial versions of their products w/o control.


I say that to demonstrate a proof of concept to some unwilling set of
engineers somewhere that rtp compiles the same code for x86 and ppc with
no modifications, I would have to go back to rtp6.1.

You have not to go back to rtp6.1 when talking with QNX sales before…
BTW, there are also fairs and roadshows to have a look to QNX
demonstrations.

[clip…]

Do you think it’s the wrong idea from QSSL that pot. customers have
to contact them when they want to try non x86 platforms ???

No, QSSL has done a very good job with rtp6.2-PE, and they have the
right to do whatever they do. However, for a number or reasons rtp6.1
had ppc capabilities, and now rtp6.2 does not. This is a fact, right?

When I remember right, it was by chance that PPC support was included,
afaik, it was not intended.


There are a number of ramifications that come from this fact, but they
are too numerous for me to dwell in them. An important one is that I
was always able to demonstrate to engineers every where the power of QNX
Neutrino without worrying about a license, but now I have to tell the
same people to believe me.

… or to contact a QNX sales. My experience is that non x86 use is
always for commercial applications …


Whence I have to go back to rtp6.1 for
demonstrating many of the capabilities of QNX Nto with some prove of
concept work.

Have in mind that QSSL has commercial interests… and it should be your
interest that they “survive”. There are enough ways for trying newest
commercial versions, you have just to choose the right formal way…


May be you are not aware how much illegal soft- and hardware (!)
copies are used in industry… and NA is no exception !!!

You are right again, Jutta. I am not much aware. The fist thing we did
when rtp6.1 came out was to buy a developers seat. The first thing I am
trying to convince decision makers to do is to upgrade the old seat and
to buy a second developers seat. This is what companies do in the first
place; I doubt that serious companies would not do likewise.

Hmm, theory and practise …
I’m long enough in business and know about what I’m talking :wink:)

Cheers,
Jutta

62

Miguel Simon wrote:

Hi Mario…

[clip…]
Can you name a product that is making money out there which is based on
an illegal use of the rtp6.1 version of QNX?

Miguel, that’s a nice rhetorical question …


I would tend to believe
that companies have developers seat regardless.

Whatever you believe, I heard already unbelievable definitions of
“NC” …

Jutta

63

Hi Jutta…

First I have to say that QNX Nto is the best thing out there. Like many
others, I am very thankful for the opportunity to experiment with rtp6.2-NC.

Having said that, I would add that the company I work with bought a
developers license for rtp6.1 because I could demonstrate to them that
this made sense. My experience has been that when researches have been
able to try something, they strongly influence the
go-ahead-and-buy-the-lisence issue.

Jutta Steinhoff wrote:

Miguel,

are you expecting that all companies are distributing a NC version
of their fully commercial products, software as well as hardware ??

I do not quite understand the point, but I do not expect any thing. I
say that to demonstrate a proof of concept to some unwilling set of
engineers somewhere that rtp compiles the same code for x86 and ppc with
no modifications, I would have to go back to rtp6.1.


If so, nobody would have been able to decide for QNX4 e.g. > :wink:

Everyone who is seriously interested in a commercial product for
education or for industry is talking with the sales guys and there
are different possibilities to clearify questions. Often are offered
demonstrations or a timely limited evaluation version or anything
else. Also, most companies have special University conditions.

This is true. QSSL has always been very open and generous with
university research. We have used QNX 4 within the university
environment before, and would suspect that the same would be true with
rtp6.2-xx


E.g. for QNX4 you could always sign for an eval. version for 30 days
or longer and I can’t imagine that there is not a similar way for
anyone who is seriously interested to use QNX6.2 for PPC.

Do you think it’s the wrong idea from QSSL that pot. customers have
to contact them when they want to try non x86 platforms ???

No, QSSL has done a very good job with rtp6.2-PE, and they have the
right to do whatever they do. However, for a number or reasons rtp6.1
had ppc capabilities, and now rtp6.2 does not. This is a fact, right?
There are a number of ramifications that come from this fact, but they
are too numerous for me to dwell in them. An important one is that I
was always able to demonstrate to engineers every where the power of QNX
Neutrino without worrying about a license, but now I have to tell the
same people to believe me. Whence I have to go back to rtp6.1 for
demonstrating many of the capabilities of QNX Nto with some prove of
concept work.


May be you are not aware how much illegal soft- and hardware (!)
copies are used in industry… and NA is no exception !!!

You are right again, Jutta. I am not much aware. The fist thing we did
when rtp6.1 came out was to buy a developers seat. The first thing I am
trying to convince decision makers to do is to upgrade the old seat and
to buy a second developers seat. This is what companies do in the first
place; I doubt that serious companies would not do likewise.


I mostly agree with you, but I just say: bummer.

Best regards…

Miguel.


Cheers,
Jutta

64

Hi Mario…

[cut]

I support QSS move here. Apparently there was LOTS of people
using the 6.1 NC version for commercial use that didn’t pay for it.

I do not disagree with you wholly, but I doubt that there are illegal
commercial products out there as a result of rtp6.1. Don’t you think?
Can you name a product that is making money out there which is based on
an illegal use of the rtp6.1 version of QNX? I would tend to believe
that companies have developers seat regardless.

RTP6.1 was a debugging run for QSSL, perhaps, and it was also a most
successful PR move -in my own opinion. More power to QSSL.


By removing most of the stuff that professional people need
in the NC version they tried to insure people would have to
buy the SE or PE version. PowerPC developer definitely fits
the professional profile.

Our robotics research work at the university uses rtp6.1 because of
obvious reasons. The utilization of rtp6.1 for such work does and
produces only two things: PR for QNX and some phd’s.

Because of some of the work mentioned above, R&D companies that again,
produce no commercial products -but generate run time licenses-, go
ahead and buy developers seat regardless. It is a win-win deal, I think,
and the basis for my previous dissertation.

bests…

Miguel.


NC is in my view targeted at the casual user, to get a first look.
Then if they get serious, they can contact sales to get a step
further to obtain a full evaluation kit.

  • Mario




    \
65

Mario Charest postmaster@127.0.0.1 wrote:

I know more people that are using the free version to develop a commercial
product and then people that have bought it. They all plan on buying it but
are waiting until product if finish. That can take a long time and is
definitely lost of revenu for QSS.

If you are using the NC version to develop a commercial product, then you
really are forced to buy commercial dev seats before you can “go live” with
the product. If you don’t, then there is no way for you to actually build
the production units and have valid OS licenses. So, there is not revenue
loss in that scenario, only a delay in when the development seats are actually
purchased.

There may indeed be companies out there that hire say 20 developers to code
on a project, all running the NC version, and then when it is ready for the
actual production environment, they go off and buy a single commercial dev
seat. They are indeed “cheaters”, and IMHO, there is no way to prevent them
from cheating. If you remove components (like mkifs), that just means that
they might purchase the single dev seat a bit sooner in the project rather
than later, but they are still unlikely to buy more than one.

The problem (sort of) is that you really only need one. You can have a whole
network of QNX machines, and only one of them has the commercial dev seat.
It’s pretty easy to use “on -n/net/commercialdevseat mkifs …”, or to use
phindows or phditto to connect to that one machine for a build, hell, even
telnet works. You can’t stop it. Those that want to cheat will, despite
your efforts. There are some (and it’s a minority of the cheaters) that
might be persuaded to buy more than one seat if you make the work-arounds
inconvenient enough, but they are pretty rare. You can take it to the
extreme where you license things to a specific machine by linking the license
to the MAC address on the NIC, or a CPU serial number. Some of the
workarounds still work (like ftp’ing all the source to a “build machine” and
then telnetting in and running the commands you don’t have in the NC version).

My point is this…
There are cheaters,
and,
they will ALWAYS cheat.

They don’t represent lost revenue because they never represented revenue in
the first place. Deal with it.

I honestly don’t beleive that there are that many cheaters out there (at
least in the QNX world). The reason is quite simple. If you build an
embedded device you need licenses and you need to get them from QSSL, that
is all there is to it, it can’t be avoided. The otherthing is that you
are also very likely to need QSSL to survive, so that you can either get
support, or buy licenses, or upgrades, whatever. Most businesses that are
using QNX in a product KNOW that they are dependant on QSSL in this
situation and it’s not worth the risk to your business to cheat QSSL.

So, there are precious few companies that are in a position to cheat QSSL
and not put their product or business at risk.

You will note that the same is NOT true for someone like Microsoft, although
to some extent some of the same things/issues apply. In fact, some of the
“cheaters” for Windows and Office actually help Microsoft improve their
market dominance.

That is really the only thing that cheaters are good for. Be happy they are
good for something.

Cheers,
Camz.

66

Hi Jutta…

Jutta Steinhoff wrote:

You could and can always do with QNX… a sign for a legal eval.
version shouldn’t be a problem…

you are right. And this is the avenue that I am pursuing right now. I
suppose it was more convenient for me to do otherwise. But I
understand, and you have a point. On the other hand, my side of the
equation is that I seem to have an uphill battle to convince people that
QNX makes better sense than just about any other solution out there.
QSSL was going down the right avenue because other engineers could
download the OS and try from themselves some simple examples. I suppose
that such engineers can still do this, but just not on ppc platform
-which is part of my original essay after all.

<…>


You are right again, Jutta. I am not much aware. The fist thing we did
when rtp6.1 came out was to buy a developers seat. The first thing I am
trying to convince decision makers to do is to upgrade the old seat and
to buy a second developers seat. This is what companies do in the first
place; I doubt that serious companies would not do likewise.


Hmm, theory and practise …
I’m long enough in business and know about what I’m talking > :wink:> )

And I acknowledge what you say.

In all cases, I appreciate your comments. Thanks. :slight_smile:

Regards…

Miguel.


Cheers,
Jutta

67

I absolutely agree, truly words about cheaters.
camz@passageway.com wrote in article <ag2h68$gad$1@inn.qnx.com>…
[…]

They don’t represent lost revenue because they never represented revenue in
the first place. […]
I especially like this place > :wink: > …strength…

–
Eduard.
ed1k at ukr dot net

68

Miguel Simon wrote:

Hi Jutta…

Jutta Steinhoff wrote:


You could and can always do with QNX… a sign for a legal eval.
version shouldn’t be a problem…

you are right. And this is the avenue that I am pursuing right now. I
suppose it was more convenient for me to do otherwise. But I
understand, and you have a point. On the other hand, my side of the
equation is that I seem to have an uphill battle to convince people that
QNX makes better sense than just about any other solution out there.

Normally it’s not so difficult to convience experienced engineers
(I’m not talking about M$ lemmings). The nut you have to crack is
management… and the next battle you have to win is P.O. office …


QSSL was going down the right avenue because other engineers could
download the OS and try from themselves some simple examples. I suppose
that such engineers can still do this, but just not on ppc platform
-which is part of my original essay after all.

the x86 platform should be enough to have a first look to QNX6.2 and if
really interested in PPC, further steps are no problem…

…


You are right again, Jutta. I am not much aware. The fist thing we did
when rtp6.1 came out was to buy a developers seat. The first thing I am
trying to convince decision makers to do is to upgrade the old seat and
to buy a second developers seat. This is what companies do in the first
place; I doubt that serious companies would not do likewise.


Hmm, theory and practise …
I’m long enough in business and know about what I’m talking > :wink:> )

And I acknowledge what you say.

:slight_smile:

It’s often a question of perspective and my job is not R&D :wink:

Cheers,
Jutta

69

camz@passageway.com wrote:

[clip…] In fact, some of the
“cheaters” for Windows and Office actually help Microsoft improve their
market dominance.

That is really the only thing that cheaters are good for. Be happy they are
good for something.

Camz, do you see what OS is running in embedded systems ??
Unfortunately there is no lable telling anyone what legal
or illegal license is used :frowning:(

Jutta

70

This is what I hate about the QNX pricing model. Why not just quote a price
for everyone and also give evals to everyone? Why should I have to call up
and beg for one or try to convince QNX I’m big enough for them to hassle
with? But it always has to be a hassle. I can’t call QNX sales because
then I get them calling me bugging me about my project and about whether I
wanted to follow through with the quote, etc. I just want a frigging price!
How hard would it be to do this on the QNX website?

Price:

Eval: Free one copy to developers
1 copy: 1,000
2-5 copies: 750
6-10 copies: 500
11-25 copies: 250
26-100 copies: 125
…
1000000-2000000 copies: 1
etc. etc. (fill in actual numbers here)

It doesn’t mean they can’t still give special discounts on top of these
discounts to their special customers, but it sure does make it easier to
know how much approximately it will cost and I don’t have to muck around
with calling sales reps who want to bug me every month to see if I want to
make a purchase.

Ok, done venting… for now.

Jim

“Alex Cellarius” <acellarius@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1103_1025768379@pentium4…

On Thu, 04 Jul 2002 01:43:42 -0700, Miguel Simon <> simon@ou.edu> > wrote:
Hi…
…
“Because now” -I answer- “if I want to convince you, a decision maker,
that it makes sense to buy ‘Momentics PE or SE’ to work on a PowerPC
board, I have to step back and utilize rtp6.1 to demonstrate my point.”

You should be able to get any version you want on an evaluation basis.
Please contact your sales rep.

(This is the same way it was done with QNX4, btw)

71

<camz@passageway.com> wrote in message news:ag2h68$gad$1@inn.qnx.com…

Mario Charest postmaster@127.0.0.1 wrote:
I know more people that are using the free version to develop a
commercial
product and then people that have bought it. They all plan on buying it
but
are waiting until product if finish. That can take a long time and is
definitely lost of revenu for QSS.

If you are using the NC version to develop a commercial product, then you
really are forced to buy commercial dev seats before you can “go live”
with
the product. If you don’t, then there is no way for you to actually build
the production units and have valid OS licenses. So, there is not revenue
loss in that scenario, only a delay in when the development seats are
actually
purchased.

Yes but this delay can kill you. A business needs constant cash flow and if
too many potential customers wait for product being ‘finished’ it means you
have pie in the sky. Software products are never really ‘finished’ :wink:

inconvenient enough, but they are pretty rare. You can take it to the
extreme where you license things to a specific machine by linking the
license
to the MAC address on the NIC, or a CPU serial number. Some of the

Hahaha, and they did =:|

Momentic PE permanent license is generated by online ‘registration’ process
and much in M$ fashion is bound to particular hardware (to generate license
you supply serial number plus a magic sequence printed by some util on your
particular machine).

I guess Alec did leave his mark on QNX after all, ROTFL.

workarounds still work (like ftp’ing all the source to a “build machine”
and
then telnetting in and running the commands you don’t have in the NC
version).

The whole licensing scheme revolves around IDE exclusively. The utilities
like mkifs are not protected in any way. So I guess the licensing system
might succeed in preventing users from running multiple instances of IDE
using just one development seat… The question is where that will lead - to
people buying more seats or to people avoiding IDE :wink:

As things stand now I tend to expect the latter, especially due to common
allergy to hardware-tied software. The IDE is based on open-source code and
eventually public version of Eclipse will be able to work with QNX. My
opinion is, Momentics PE will be a failure if it will remain solely
IDE-centric product. QNX needs to keep adding more beef to the core product
to further differentiate NC, SE and PE, so people who pay $8K will know they
are getting something valuable, like high-availability/hot-swap capabilities
and other things needed by professionals.

– igor

72

Igor Kovalenko <Igor.Kovalenko@motorola.com> wrote:

Yes but this delay can kill you. A business needs constant cash flow and if
too many potential customers wait for product being ‘finished’ it means you
have pie in the sky. Software products are never really ‘finished’ > :wink:

It all works out in the end, the only difference is when the flow starts.
QSSL has already survived 20+ years, so they have made it past that point.

Momentic PE permanent license is generated by online ‘registration’ process
and much in M$ fashion is bound to particular hardware (to generate license
you supply serial number plus a magic sequence printed by some util on your
particular machine).

Oh joy, so when I upgrade or change my hardware the damned thing will break?

The whole licensing scheme revolves around IDE exclusively. The utilities
like mkifs are not protected in any way. So I guess the licensing system
might succeed in preventing users from running multiple instances of IDE
using just one development seat… The question is where that will lead - to
people buying more seats or to people avoiding IDE > :wink:

As things stand now I tend to expect the latter, especially due to common
allergy to hardware-tied software.

I would imagine you are correct. Especially since it’s the easiest thing to
do.

The IDE is based on open-source code and
eventually public version of Eclipse will be able to work with QNX.

It already exists, and it already works, you just don’t have the plugins.

opinion is, Momentics PE will be a failure if it will remain solely
IDE-centric product. QNX needs to keep adding more beef to the core product
to further differentiate NC, SE and PE, so people who pay $8K will know they
are getting something valuable, like high-availability/hot-swap capabilities
and other things needed by professionals.

Definitely.

Despite what the reality is, the perception is that the primary differentiation
between SE and PE is the IDE (I know that isn’t completely accurate). I think
this is just plain wrong. If you do take the time to look at the extras in PE
you discover that they are aimed at a more “bare metal” requirement in PE.
In other words, the extras in PE are gear towoards those OEMs that would be
building/designing/manufacturing their own hardware as opposed to assembling
systems from off-the-shelf components. That is fine, and we know that those
customers exist. What I completely disagree with is the assumption that only
those people would need the IDE and the plugins it provides. My personal
opinion is that the IDE should have been an individual product all along and
not part of a specific version of the tools. I’m not even sure if I agree
with two versions of the commercial product, I don’t think that would be
required if they made the IDE seperate.

I think that perhaps, they have some work still to do on packaging. I know
that in the past they did offer some of the peices seperate and I guess the
fact that they changed it means that it wasn’t working. I think it may have
been how they modularized and packaged it. I think you could get RTP, SAT
NAT, or HAT, and SAT/NAT/HAT all included RPC, there was no way to only get
the HAT stuff to extend the capabilities of an existing RPC license. They
should break it out into a “core” package and then the additional bits on
top of that and just provide an online “configurator” that asks them some
questions like:

  1. Do you need SMP? Yes/No
  2. Do you need an IDE? Yes/No
  3. Do you need High Availability/Fault Tolerance? Yes/No
  4. Do you need additional networking protocols (SNMP, MOST, etc) Yes/No
  5. Do you need to create your own BSP? Yes/No
    …

Based on the answers they could then build an appropriate list of modules
that the customer would require.

Okay, maybe that’s a bit extreme, but the reality is that if the only thing
in PE that you need (above and beyond what is in SE) then the IDE has a $4K US
price tag, which is rather hard to swallow knowing that the guts of the IDE
are opensource.

At least QSSL is making progress.

Cheers,
Camz.

73

Igor Kovalenko wrote:
[ clip …]

The whole licensing scheme revolves around IDE exclusively. The utilities
like mkifs are not protected in any way. So I guess the licensing system
might succeed in preventing users from running multiple instances of IDE
using just one development seat… The question is where that will lead - to
people buying more seats or to people avoiding IDE > :wink:

As things stand now I tend to expect the latter, especially due to common
allergy to hardware-tied software.

So you have a ‘common allergy’ against drivers?

Or do you have an allergy against ‘hardware-tied’ copy protection of
software ?

Cheers

Armin


The IDE is based on open-source code and

eventually public version of Eclipse will be able to work with QNX. My
opinion is, Momentics PE will be a failure if it will remain solely
IDE-centric product. QNX needs to keep adding more beef to the core product
to further differentiate NC, SE and PE, so people who pay $8K will know they
are getting something valuable, like high-availability/hot-swap capabilities
and other things needed by professionals.

– igor

74

“Armin Steinhoff” <a-steinhoff@web_.de> wrote in message
news:3D2EBC3A.6CB5BC9F@web_.de…

Igor Kovalenko wrote:
[ clip …]

The whole licensing scheme revolves around IDE exclusively. The
utilities
like mkifs are not protected in any way. So I guess the licensing system
might succeed in preventing users from running multiple instances of IDE
using just one development seat… The question is where that will
lead - to
people buying more seats or to people avoiding IDE > :wink:

As things stand now I tend to expect the latter, especially due to
common
allergy to hardware-tied software.

So you have a ‘common allergy’ against drivers?

There is no point to run driver without hardware so don’t make assumptions
which I am sure sound as ridiculous to you as to me.

Or do you have an allergy against ‘hardware-tied’ copy protection of
software ?

It depends. If software is tied to some kind of hardware dongle which comes
with it, I have no problem with that, since I can move the dongle to any
other computer when I need to, give it away or do whatever I like in
general, as long as I don’t try to run it on more than one computer at the
same time.

But tying to things like MAC address or motherboard or CPU serial number or
any other computer-specific key is annoying and I generally try to avoid
such software because it limits/encumbers my ability to change/upgrade
hardware. I also find that such protection violates the fair use principle.
It is like selling a car which can only be parked in one particular garage
and driven by one particular driver.

Cheers,
– igor