QNX6 vs WinCE?

QNX Newsgroups (Archives) qdn.public.qnxrtp.advocacy
1

This question about WinCE would not even be there if the port from QNX4 to
QNX6 would be
simple. Alas, when we tried to do it the very first time we realised that
QNX4 and qnx6
are two different OSes, and some code has to be redesigned. Alas, the
migration library
provided by qssl was just a joke.

MS dropped runtime license price for WinCE 4.2 down to $3 and
The cost of a development sit is about $1000. The cost of QNX6 is 6-7 times
higher!
BTW from my observation if one wants to enjoy momentics IDE he would need
to run it on P4 2GHz with 512Mb :frowning:
I understand that money is not everything but when I went through the
comparison report
between QNX6, WinCE and WindRiver’s OS. I could see that WinCE is not that
bad at all.
And I was amazed by the list of hardware supported by WinCE it looks like
QNX6
is not even close :frowning:

I understand it may be a lame try to get an objective opinion in a
conference
dedicated to qnx6 but anyway I’d appreciate any thoughts about if WinCE is a
real
thing to consider before starting to port from QNX4 to QNX6

cheers,
Igor

2

Igor Levko wrote:

I understand it may be a lame try to get an objective opinion in a
conference
dedicated to qnx6 but anyway I’d appreciate any thoughts about if WinCE is a
real
thing to consider before starting to port from QNX4 to QNX6

When you are selecting something as fundamental to your product as an operating
system, you are (for all intents and purposes) going into business with the
supplier of that OS.

There are 2 primary things to consider when making a decision on which 3rd party
software company you want to go into business with.

  1. Technical requirements

  2. Business requirements

Both need to be thoroughly researched. For technical requirements, this almost
certainly means testing. Do test both OS’s. If WinCE meets your technical
requirements (it may if your requirements aren’t too demanding), then move to
point item 2 (obviously if it won’t do what you need it to it isn’t even a
starter). Don’t believe marketing material, and when evaluating technical
requirements don’t forget to rate quality of support.

The business requirement is the big one (assuming you are a business). Here are
some points to consider for business requirements:

  • Development costs (how easy will it be to develop in the environment)
  • Present day unit costs (runtime and devel)
  • Future costs (runtime and devel)
  • Support costs
  • Continuity of supply
  • Reliability of supply
  • Corporate ethics

Hope this helps.

Rennie

3

“Igor Levko” <ilevko@applanix.com> wrote in message
news:bcq2i0$6q6$1@inn.qnx.com…

This question about WinCE would not even be there if the port from QNX4 to
QNX6 would be
simple. Alas, when we tried to do it the very first time we realised that
QNX4 and qnx6
are two different OSes, and some code has to be redesigned. Alas, the
migration library
provided by qssl was just a joke.

The library is just a wraper to easy up API migration. No library can
auto-magically transform your architecture.

MS dropped runtime license price for WinCE 4.2 down to $3 and

Negotiate your qnx real-time royalties then :wink:

The cost of a development sit is about $1000. The cost of QNX6 is 6-7
times
higher!

I do not think you have an IDE under QNX4, right? You might find an IDE
development not productive as you expect it to be. This is my expirience,
though. Anyway, we use vim/gdb/cvs under QNX6 on daily basis and it works.
Begin without IDE and you’ll see if you need it later.

BTW from my observation if one wants to enjoy momentics IDE he would need
to run it on P4 2GHz with 512Mb > :frowning:
I understand that money is not everything but when I went through the
comparison report
between QNX6, WinCE and WindRiver’s OS. I could see that WinCE is not that
bad at all.

OS migration once in 10 years is OK. WinCE has changed 4 versions in about
5-6 years, if I’m not mistaken. If someone tells me that a driver written
under version 1 is going to work under version 4 w/o rewriting, I’ll be
[beep] surprised. When a vendor is gallopping through releases as MS is, I
would question maturity and reliability of the product.

The learning curves qnx4-qnx6 and qnx4-wince are not even comparable.

And I was amazed by the list of hardware supported by WinCE it looks like
QNX6
is not even close > :frowning:

This is true with some if’s and but’s. It is somewhat doable to customize
existing QNX BSP’s and to pull together your own. I would suggest you to
evaluate this aspect of WinCE.

The length of the h/w list itself is meaningless. You need your specific
platform to be supported and to be used in production.

Good luck,
-Dmitri

I understand it may be a lame try to get an objective opinion in a
conference
dedicated to qnx6 but anyway I’d appreciate any thoughts about if WinCE is
a
real
thing to consider before starting to port from QNX4 to QNX6

cheers,
Igor

4

“Dmitri Poustovalov” <pdmitri@bigfoot.com> wrote in message
news:bctv9q$hh7$1@inn.qnx.com…

“Igor Levko” <> ilevko@applanix.com> > wrote in message
news:bcq2i0$6q6$> 1@inn.qnx.com> …
This question about WinCE would not even be there if the port from QNX4
to
QNX6 would be
simple. Alas, when we tried to do it the very first time we realised
that
QNX4 and qnx6
are two different OSes, and some code has to be redesigned. Alas, the
migration library
provided by qssl was just a joke.

The library is just a wraper to easy up API migration. No library can
auto-magically transform your architecture.

Right. Plus, an architectural change may actually benefit the application.
QNX6 opens up possibilities that did not exist for QNX4, one might as well
try to use them. It is a convinient opportunity to review your past
experience doing your product, realize what was done good and what was
not-so-good and do a ‘next generation’ of your thing.

Now, WinCE might actually force you to downgrade your architectural desires.
Current versions have decent latencies, but its functionality level does not
really match QNX.

MS dropped runtime license price for WinCE 4.2 down to $3 and

Negotiate your qnx real-time royalties then > :wink:

The cost of a development sit is about $1000. The cost of QNX6 is 6-7
times
higher!

I do not think you have an IDE under QNX4, right? You might find an IDE
development not productive as you expect it to be. This is my expirience,
though. Anyway, we use vim/gdb/cvs under QNX6 on daily basis and it works.
Begin without IDE and you’ll see if you need it later.

We also work without IDE so far. People have their own pet editors. The
official builds must be batched (they take long). But of course, this
depends on your particular situation.

And I was amazed by the list of hardware supported by WinCE it looks
like
QNX6
is not even close > :frowning:

This is true with some if’s and but’s. It is somewhat doable to customize
existing QNX BSP’s and to pull together your own. I would suggest you to
evaluate this aspect of WinCE.

The length of the h/w list itself is meaningless. You need your specific
platform to be supported and to be used in production.

Last time I checked, WinCE had rather lame definition of ‘supported’
hardware. Basically, to claim you have a BSP all you needed to do is to
bring up the kernel with a serial port working, or something to that effect.
That allows MS to have a very long list of BSPs that only support minimum
subset of boards’ functionality.

OTOH, QNX does not seem to have any definition at all. I hear they are just
starting to actually let hardware vendors do their own BSPs for QNX. They
BSPs they do usually include support for applicable PCI devices.

– igor

5

Dmitri Poustovalov <pdmitri@bigfoot.com> wrote:

The cost of a development sit is about $1000. The cost of QNX6 is 6-7
times higher!

I do not think you have an IDE under QNX4, right? You might find an IDE
development not productive as you expect it to be. This is my expirience,
though. Anyway, we use vim/gdb/cvs under QNX6 on daily basis and it works.
Begin without IDE and you’ll see if you need it later.

if you don’t need IDE, you can live with the qnx6 SE version which is
about 4-5 times higher. if you really need IDE, then you will have to
go with qnx6 PE version, which is about 8-9 times higher.
I don’t know where the “6-7 times higher” number came from.

6

[skip]

OTOH, QNX does not seem to have any definition at all. I hear they are just
starting to actually let hardware vendors do their own BSPs for QNX.

If that’s true then this marketing breakthrough will be as significant as
IDE introduction. In order to gain more market share QSS should convince
board vendors to build QNX BSPs and drivers. There are a few reasons why QSS
should do it.



I believe that QSS is still fighting consequences of being a single-platform
OS in past. First of all QNX doesn’t have much of acceptance as a viable
multi-platform OS. By involving 3rd party vendors QSS can get wider presence
and acceptance.



QNX6 opened Pandora’s box of opportunities to jump on. These opportunities
brought the whole zoo of industry-specific requirements and
industry-specific accepted practices. QSS cannot cover equally all of them
due to limited forces and lack of domain knowledge in every possible market.
It is achievable, though, by building chains of BSP/driver suppliers,
partners, consultants etc for major markets.



The story of pSOS and VxWorks could better illustrate the importance of
availability of 3rd party BSPs. People at Integrated Systems believed that
they wrote the best OS, drivers, BSP, and nobody else could do it better.
Well, they told us so. VxWorks was/is a way less sophisticated OS but every
board vendor provided its own BSP for this OS. VxWorks just established an
API that became a de-facto standard. It is pretty extensive API and Wind
River scored a lot of points in “API richness” category :wink: (It is not well
known fact, though, that for good chunk of that API Wind River provides
description only and a real content is to be filled up by BSP vendors.)



Elegancy of OS is irrelevant when you are facing a dilemma of bringing a
board up and running from ground zero or customizing existing BSP. I believe
this “open BSP API” strategy was among other things those helped VxWorks to
overcome pSOS and to become customers’ first choice. Today I see Linux
replacing VxWorks in that role.



Another benefit of having more vendors doing QNX BSP is improvement of BSPs
quality. QNX has an excellent architecture of BSP framework. But it is
poorly documented. QSS drivers’ code violates architectural rules and do not
keep up with devices’ errata. I hope fix is a matter of time.



-Dmitri

7

Well,
About WinCE, despite a ridicul price, lot of those try to develop for
that OS regret there choice.
About QNX, my point of view is that there is a big problem with the
price policy since QRTP and more since Momentics.
If QSSL continues in that direction they run the risk to desappear from
the market like WindRiver did…

alain.

Igor Levko a écrit:

This question about WinCE would not even be there if the port from QNX4 to
QNX6 would be
simple. Alas, when we tried to do it the very first time we realised that
QNX4 and qnx6
are two different OSes, and some code has to be redesigned. Alas, the
migration library
provided by qssl was just a joke.

MS dropped runtime license price for WinCE 4.2 down to $3 and
The cost of a development sit is about $1000. The cost of QNX6 is 6-7 times
higher!
BTW from my observation if one wants to enjoy momentics IDE he would need
to run it on P4 2GHz with 512Mb > :frowning:
I understand that money is not everything but when I went through the
comparison report
between QNX6, WinCE and WindRiver’s OS. I could see that WinCE is not that
bad at all.
And I was amazed by the list of hardware supported by WinCE it looks like
QNX6
is not even close > :frowning:

I understand it may be a lame try to get an objective opinion in a
conference
dedicated to qnx6 but anyway I’d appreciate any thoughts about if WinCE is a
real
thing to consider before starting to port from QNX4 to QNX6

cheers,
Igor
\

8

Alain Bonnefoy wrote:

Well,
About WinCE, despite a ridicul price, lot of those try to develop for
that OS regret there choice.
About QNX, my point of view is that there is a big problem with the
price policy since QRTP and more since Momentics.
If QSSL continues in that direction they run the risk to desappear from
the market like WindRiver did…

True … how can we compete against M$Soft based automation solutions
consisting of a SCADA system, Soft-PLCs (or similar) and a OS runtime
(no dev. system needed) if the first ‘runtime package’ of QNX6 costs
$12.000 ??

The product packaging of QNX6 and its license policy is just a killer
for the automation market …

Armin

9

“Armin Steinhoff” <a-steinhoff@web.de> wrote in message
news:behpl7$p1h$1@inn.qnx.com…

Alain Bonnefoy wrote:
Well,
About WinCE, despite a ridicul price, lot of those try to develop for
that OS regret there choice.
About QNX, my point of view is that there is a big problem with the
price policy since QRTP and more since Momentics.
If QSSL continues in that direction they run the risk to desappear from
the market like WindRiver did…

True … how can we compete against M$Soft based automation solutions
consisting of a SCADA system, Soft-PLCs (or similar) and a OS runtime
(no dev. system needed) if the first ‘runtime package’ of QNX6 costs
$12.000 ??

As far as I know, runtime and development prices have nothing to do with
each other. I don’t know where $12.000 comes from either. The SE is priced
at about $4K, the PE is about $8K. Those are development seat prices.

For the runtimes you sign an OEM or VAR agreement and a single quantity
basic OS runtime is about few hundreds dollars.
The annual charge to keep you going between versions is about $5K.

The product packaging of QNX6 and its license policy is just a killer
for the automation market …

I think it is more of the issue with the lack of policy. Except for SE and
PE price everything is ‘call us’ and that leaves too much freedom for
distributors especially in Europe to hike the prices as much as they like or
invent extortion schemes requiring you to buy stuff in bundles or do other
unreasonable things once you’re ‘on hook’. This is just waiting for someone
to sue them and the only reason why this did not happen yet is that big
players (who would sue) always have OEM agreements.

– igor

10

Igor Kovalenko wrote:

“Armin Steinhoff” <> a-steinhoff@web.de> > wrote in message
news:behpl7$p1h$> 1@inn.qnx.com> …

Alain Bonnefoy wrote:

Well,
About WinCE, despite a ridicul price, lot of those try to develop for
that OS regret there choice.
About QNX, my point of view is that there is a big problem with the
price policy since QRTP and more since Momentics.
If QSSL continues in that direction they run the risk to desappear from
the market like WindRiver did…

True … how can we compete against M$Soft based automation solutions
consisting of a SCADA system, Soft-PLCs (or similar) and a OS runtime
(no dev. system needed) if the first ‘runtime package’ of QNX6 costs
$12.000 ??



As far as I know, runtime and development prices have nothing to do with
each other.

Runtimes (only) are not offered by QSSL …

I don’t know where $12.000 comes from either. The SE is priced
at about $4K, the PE is about $8K. Those are development seat prices.

But you have to pay the support fee in addvance and probably additional
taxes …

For the runtimes you sign an OEM or VAR agreement

This is not interesting because of warranty issues.

and a single quantity
basic OS runtime is about few hundreds dollars.
The annual charge to keep you going between versions is about $5K.

Why should a customer pay $5K if he need only e.g. 5 runtimes per year??
Why should a customer buy a develoment system if only a runtime is
needed?? Why should a customer pay a support fee for something what
he doesn’t need??

M$soft has no problems to sell runtime and development systems
separately …

The product packaging of QNX6 and its license policy is just a killer
for the automation market …
I think it is more of the issue with the lack of policy.

No … a M$soft customer has no problems to by on an ‘open market’
a SCADA system and e.g WinXP around the next corner.

QNX6 is a nice system but try to buy a runtime from the OS vendor …

Except for SE and
PE price everything is ‘call us’ and that leaves too much freedom for
distributors especially in Europe to hike the prices as much as they like or
invent extortion schemes requiring you to buy stuff in bundles or do other
unreasonable things once you’re ‘on hook’. This is just waiting for someone
to sue them and the only reason why this did not happen yet is that big
players (who would sue) always have OEM agreements.

This seems no to be the problem. If a new customer tries to buy
a runtime for a third party software he will get at first an offer
for PE … and this is often the end of his efforts to create a QNX6
based solution =:-/

Armin

11

“Armin Steinhoff” <a-steinhoff@web.de> wrote in message
news:bejmfj$v8$1@inn.qnx.com…

This seems no to be the problem. If a new customer tries to buy
a runtime for a third party software he will get at first an offer
for PE … and this is often the end of his efforts to create a QNX6
based solution =:-/

Armin

I know from consulting that this is true. BUT . . . the vendor of a third

party product that runs on QNX should have supplied the runtime with his
product.

Let’s be blunt and face facts. QSSL doesn’t want to deal with individuals
anymore. They have chosen to price their product out of reach of small
companies. They know what they are doing. The little guy isn’t welcome
anymore.

12

“Armin Steinhoff” <a-steinhoff@web.de> wrote in message
news:bejmfj$v8$1@inn.qnx.com…

Igor Kovalenko wrote:
“Armin Steinhoff” <> a-steinhoff@web.de> > wrote in message
news:behpl7$p1h$> 1@inn.qnx.com> …

Alain Bonnefoy wrote:

Well,
About WinCE, despite a ridicul price, lot of those try to develop for
that OS regret there choice.
About QNX, my point of view is that there is a big problem with the
price policy since QRTP and more since Momentics.
If QSSL continues in that direction they run the risk to desappear from
the market like WindRiver did…

True … how can we compete against M$Soft based automation solutions
consisting of a SCADA system, Soft-PLCs (or similar) and a OS runtime
(no dev. system needed) if the first ‘runtime package’ of QNX6 costs
$12.000 ??



As far as I know, runtime and development prices have nothing to do with
each other.

Runtimes (only) are not offered by QSSL …

You have to buy a development seat before you can buy runtimes. But you only
have to buy development seat ONCE.

I don’t know where $12.000 comes from either. The SE is priced
at about $4K, the PE is about $8K. Those are development seat prices.

But you have to pay the support fee in addvance and probably additional
taxes …

For the runtimes you sign an OEM or VAR agreement

This is not interesting because of warranty issues.

It is unclear what you mean.

and a single quantity
basic OS runtime is about few hundreds dollars.
The annual charge to keep you going between versions is about $5K.

Why should a customer pay $5K if he need only e.g. 5 runtimes per year??

The $5K is for maintaining your development seat (so you can upgrade to
newer versions of it). You can avoid paying that, but you’ll be stuck with
the version that you originally bought.

Why should a customer buy a develoment system if only a runtime is
needed?? Why should a customer pay a support fee for something what
he doesn’t need??

As I said, you don’t have to. The pricing is indeed structured with the idea
that someone who can afford $9K for development seat probably can afford to
pay $5K per year to keep it current and have support.

M$soft has no problems to sell runtime and development systems
separately …

M$ is in different business. But yes, QNX should make their policy with
runtimes clearer.

The product packaging of QNX6 and its license policy is just a killer
for the automation market …
I think it is more of the issue with the lack of policy.

No … a M$soft customer has no problems to by on an ‘open market’
a SCADA system and e.g WinXP around the next corner.

QNX6 is a nice system but try to buy a runtime from the OS vendor …

You keep trying to compare M$ with QNX (as companies). They are
incomparable, haven’t you noticed? One operates with tens of billions,
another with tens of millions. You can’t expect identical pricing and
policies.

This seems no to be the problem. If a new customer tries to buy
a runtime for a third party software he will get at first an offer
for PE … and this is often the end of his efforts to create a QNX6
based solution =:-/

Well, a salesman would much rather sell PE for $9K than RT for couple
hundred bucks, right? Remember however that salesmen are just like those
folks in the car dealerships. They DO negotiate and one should not be afraid
to push them.

But in general, the only good fix to this problem is a publicly available
(on the web site) basic quantity 1 pricelist with ALL options. Otherwise you
come to dealership to buy a new wheel and salesman insists you need to buy a
new car with it… Rumors say they are going to have such a thing after all.

– igor

13

Bill Caroselli wrote:

“Armin Steinhoff” <> a-steinhoff@web.de> > wrote in message
news:bejmfj$v8$> 1@inn.qnx.com> …

This seems not to be the problem. If a new customer tries to buy
a runtime for a third party software he will get at first an offer
for PE … and this is often the end of his efforts to create a QNX6
based solution =:-/

Armin

I know from consulting that this is true. BUT . . . the vendor of a third
party product that runs on QNX should have supplied the runtime with his
product.

Hi Bill, do you know the 3rd Party conditions?
There is written: "… for companies creating QNX-compatible
software and hardware, web browsers, databases, hardware peripherals,
development tools, and boards f o r s a l e i n d e p e n -
d e n t l y o f p r o d u c t s o f f e r e d b y Q N X
S o f t w a r e S y s t e m s . "

Supplying a runtime license means to resell a sheet of paper and a
sticker. OK, how to install a sticker??
If you really would resell runtime licenses which are not bundled with
your product or a project, so it means:

  1. you have to burn an “original” QNX Runtime Module CD yourself

  2. when you burn it, you are responsable for it and you have to
    support it

How can you be responsable for it when even from official side was told
me that they can’t be responsable for their own software when a customer
only wants to buy runtimes for a critical plant but don’t buy additional
Momentics… any ideas??

Notice, in industrial automation are used often SCADAs or SoftPLCs, that
means you don’t need Momentics. The customer has e.g. a M$ or a Linux
based Workbench and links his application via TCP/IP to a QNX Target
system. So he needs from QSSL just a QNX runtime license, nothing else.
But QSSx is not interested in that market if the customer is not willing
to buy additional to e.g. 3 needed runtime licenses a Momentics system

  • annual support fee for his waste basket. - It’s often a single QNX
    system. If not, so some customers will need not more than 3-5 QNX
    runtime systems per year.

It seems it’s more interesting for QSSL to discuss with OEMs about 1/10
cent for low cost runtimes instead of getting some hundred dollars for a
few runtime licenses from a customer in classical automation industry.

Let’s be blunt and face facts. QSSL doesn’t want to deal with individuals
anymore. They have chosen to price their product out of reach of small
companies. They know what they are doing. The little guy isn’t welcome
anymore.

You are absolutely right.

But the “little guy” are also big companies which will need a single
QNX system. OTOH, small innovative companies which are often pioneers
for the “big dogs” can’t use QNX for non embedded systems…

The real joke is their marketing stragedy when distributing thousands of
QRTP and QNX6 NC CDs, even in PC Magazines. A system which is unwanted
for non embedded targets is normally not distributed in that way in
order to shock people if they really want to use it …

BTW, did you ever see demos or non commercial software distributed on
fairs or in magazines from Greenhill’s INTEGRITY, WindRiver’s VxWorks
or Jaluna’s C5 (based on CHORUS!) which can even be integrated into
Linux?

QNX is not the only RTOS and we have to accept the decision from QSSL
that they don’t want to take part in the rapidly growing open control
market with QNX target systems where realtime is requested much more
than in the past.

  • Jutta
14

Igor Kovalenko wrote:

“Armin Steinhoff” <> a-steinhoff@web.de> > wrote in message
news:bejmfj$v8$> 1@inn.qnx.com> …

Igor Kovalenko wrote:

“Armin Steinhoff” <> a-steinhoff@web.de> > wrote in message
news:behpl7$p1h$> 1@inn.qnx.com> …


Alain Bonnefoy wrote:


Well,
About WinCE, despite a ridicul price, lot of those try to develop for
that OS regret there choice.
About QNX, my point of view is that there is a big problem with the
price policy since QRTP and more since Momentics.
If QSSL continues in that direction they run the risk to desappear from
the market like WindRiver did…

True … how can we compete against M$Soft based automation solutions
consisting of a SCADA system, Soft-PLCs (or similar) and a OS runtime
(no dev. system needed) if the first ‘runtime package’ of QNX6 costs
$12.000 ??



As far as I know, runtime and development prices have nothing to do with
each other.

Runtimes (only) are not offered by QSSL …

You have to buy a development seat before you can buy runtimes. But you only
have to buy development seat ONCE.

That’s OK for me. But tell me why should an END-USER buy a C/C++
development seat if he want to programm with a Soft-PLC??

QSSL is simply restricting here their market by themselfs.

I don’t know where $12.000 comes from either. The SE is priced
at about $4K, the PE is about $8K. Those are development seat prices.

But you have to pay the support fee in addvance and probably additional
taxes …

For the runtimes you sign an OEM or VAR agreement

This is not interesting because of warranty issues.


It is unclear what you mean.

As you know … you have to give warranty for the products you have
sold. There are also important legal aspects if one of these products
could be the cause of damages … I’m not in the position to handle all
warranty and legal issues in place of QSSL, because I have to provide
the real QNX runtime software and not only stickers.

and a single quantity
basic OS runtime is about few hundreds dollars.
The annual charge to keep you going between versions is about $5K.

Why should a customer pay $5K if he need only e.g. 5 runtimes per year??


The $5K is for maintaining your development seat (so you can upgrade to
newer versions of it). You can avoid paying that, but you’ll be stuck with
the version that you originally bought.

Some END-USERs don’t need a development seat … when we talk about a
typical user of SCADA or Soft-PLC systems.

Why should a customer buy a develoment system if only a runtime is
needed?? Why should a customer pay a support fee for something what
he doesn’t need??


As I said, you don’t have to. The pricing is indeed structured with the idea
that someone who can afford $9K for development seat probably can afford to
pay $5K per year to keep it current and have support.

BTW … there is NO CLEAR commitment that QSSL allows Third Parties to
re-sell QNX runtimes.

M$soft has no problems to sell runtime and development systems
separately …

M$ is in different business.

Not at all … a M$Windows based SCADA system + M$S runtime is targeting
the same market as similar QNX based SCADA solutions.

There is also an OPEN market for M$S based third parties … yes, but
here are big differences with QNX based products.

But yes, QNX should make their policy with
runtimes clearer.


The product packaging of QNX6 and its license policy is just a killer
for the automation market …

I think it is more of the issue with the lack of policy.

No … a M$soft customer has no problems to by on an ‘open market’
a SCADA system and e.g WinXP around the next corner.

QNX6 is a nice system but try to buy a runtime from the OS vendor …


You keep trying to compare M$ with QNX (as companies).

No … the customers are comparing e.g. M$s based SCADA solutions with
QNX based SCADA solutions.

They are incomparable, haven’t you noticed?

You are rigth, the marketing of QSSL is incomparable …

One operates with tens of billions, another with tens of millions.

Yes … and not only this. QSSL is restricting their market by themself.

You can’t expect identical pricing and policies.

I don’t expect it …

This seems no to be the problem. If a new customer tries to buy
a runtime for a third party software he will get at first an offer
for PE … and this is often the end of his efforts to create a QNX6
based solution =:-/


Well, a salesman would much rather sell PE for $9K than RT for couple
hundred bucks, right? Remember however that salesmen are just like those
folks in the car dealerships. They DO negotiate and one should not be afraid
to push them.

But in general, the only good fix to this problem is a publicly available
(on the web site) basic quantity 1 pricelist with ALL options. Otherwise you
come to dealership to buy a new wheel and salesman insists you need to buy a
new car with it… Rumors say they are going to have such a thing after all.

Just rumors again and again …

Armin

15

“Igor Kovalenko” <kovalenko@attbi.com> wrote in message
news:beka76$meg$1@inn.qnx.com…

The $5K is for maintaining your development seat (so you can upgrade to
newer versions of it). You can avoid paying that, but you’ll be stuck with
the version that you originally bought.

The problem here is this. Look at their track record. QSSL deosn’t come out
with fixes as often as they used to before they lost control of their own
business. So, you could spend $5000 for upgrade support AND GET NOTHING FOR
IT! But then if they come out with an update on the thirteenth month, after
your upgrade term has expired, your stuck paying for a whole new OS!

Let me see a show of hands (if any of you suckers are still around) how many
have had to do exactly what I’m talking about?

16

Armin Steinhoff wrote:

Igor Kovalenko wrote:
“Armin Steinhoff” <> a-steinhoff@web.de> > wrote in message
news:bejmfj$v8$> 1@inn.qnx.com> …
Igor Kovalenko wrote:
“Armin Steinhoff” <> a-steinhoff@web.de> > wrote in message
news:behpl7$p1h$> 1@inn.qnx.com> …
Alain Bonnefoy wrote:

[… ]

Runtimes (only) are not offered by QSSL …

You have to buy a development seat before you can buy runtimes.
But you only have to buy development seat ONCE.

That’s OK for me. But tell me why should an END-USER buy a C/C++
development seat if he want to programm with a Soft-PLC??

My impression is that QSSx is not willing to understand that not all
customers will need Momentics. Their focus is embedded market, so
the automation market is not seen.

In the past the QNX runtime price policy prevented often the use of QNX,
today they could win additional market shares in the growing automation
market with SoftPLCs but are not interested in additional business.


I don’t know where $12.000 comes from either. The SE is priced
at about $4K, the PE is about $8K. Those are development seat prices.

May be prices for North America. The amount for EUR prices is higher
although 1 USD is only ~ 0,87 EUR !

It would be nice to have the same public USD or/and EUR price list for
all QSSx subs and distributors, at least for all countries where you
don’t pay customs for software.

But you have to pay the support fee in addvance and probably additional
taxes …

when you ask for an offer for 3 runtime licenses you get offered at
first PE incl. annual support. That EUR price exchanged to USD is even
higher than $12.000

For the runtimes you sign an OEM or VAR agreement

This is not interesting because of warranty issues.

It is unclear what you mean.

As you know … you have to give warranty for the products you have
sold. There are also important legal aspects if one of these products
could be the cause of damages … I’m not in the position to handle all
warranty and legal issues in place of QSSL, because I have to provide
the real QNX runtime software and not only stickers.

Just to make it more clear:
it’s a difference if a company bundles their software with QNX licenses
like e.g. for router hardware, or if a company offers products which run
(only) under QNX or have a QNX Target.

In the first case, the license is already installed on a device and you
know exactly what is installed in which way, QNX is integrated. In the
second case, the customer has to install the license himself on his
hardware.

If you resell a single license for installing, so you have to send a
license sheet and sticker to the customer… If you burn an “original”
CD for installing the runtime because of the customer can’t install a
sticker, so you can run into legal and warrenty issues as mentioned
from Armin.

[… ]

Why should a customer buy a develoment system if only a runtime is
needed?? Why should a customer pay a support fee for something what
he doesn’t need??

As I said, you don’t have to.

that’s unfortunately not correct :frowning:(

The pricing is indeed structured with the idea
that someone who can afford $9K for development seat probably can afford to
pay $5K per year to keep it current and have support.

BTW … there is NO CLEAR commitment that QSSL allows Third Parties to
re-sell QNX runtimes.

Reselling Runtime licenses as single product would only make sense if
QSSx would deliver Runtime Modules as software, too.

My proposal for QSSx would be to offer e.g. bundles with 5 or 10
runtimes incl. an original QNX Runtime Module CD (may be 1-3 different
versions)

[…]

This seems no to be the problem. If a new customer tries to buy
a runtime for a third party software he will get at first an offer
for PE … and this is often the end of his efforts to create a QNX6
based solution =:-/


Well, a salesman would much rather sell PE for $9K than RT for couple
hundred bucks, right?

and how would he decide when he sells nothing or has a chance to sell
often some RTs for a couple hundred bucks? … and after some while,
he can even sell SE because of a company likes to buy qties and wants
an OEM agreement…

A salesman who can’t think from today to tomorrow should be fired :wink:

Remember however that salesmen are just like those
folks in the car dealerships. They DO negotiate and one should not be afraid
to push them.

But in general, the only good fix to this problem is a publicly available
(on the web site) basic quantity 1 pricelist with ALL options.

Customers get shipped deliveries from Canada with their new policy,
so it should also be possible to order single qties online… and no
salesman has to think about if he is willing to sell :wink:

Otherwise you
come to dealership to buy a new wheel and salesman insists you need to buy a
new car with it… Rumors say they are going to have such a thing after all.

Just rumors again and again …

May be they didn’t recognize that other companies make much business
with wheels and customers buy even their cars after some while, too…

Cheers,
Jutta

17

“Bill Caroselli” <qtps@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:bekkma$3u8$1@inn.qnx.com…

“Igor Kovalenko” <> kovalenko@attbi.com> > wrote in message
news:beka76$meg$> 1@inn.qnx.com> …

The $5K is for maintaining your development seat (so you can upgrade to
newer versions of it). You can avoid paying that, but you’ll be stuck
with
the version that you originally bought.


The problem here is this. Look at their track record. QSSL deosn’t come
out
with fixes as often as they used to before they lost control of their own
business. So, you could spend $5000 for upgrade support AND GET NOTHING
FOR
IT! But then if they come out with an update on the thirteenth month,
after
your upgrade term has expired, your stuck paying for a whole new OS!

Let me see a show of hands (if any of you suckers are still around) how
many
have had to do exactly what I’m talking about?

I think the idea behind this is the “insurance policy”. You pay home and car
insurance every month, even if nothing happens with them. If you stop paying
and next day a fire takes your house, you’re SOL. The idea is, you DON’T
stop paying after a year, you just keep going :wink:

I have to say, this is quite an original business model. Nevertheless, some
(especially bigger) customers undoubtedly like it a lot more than
uncertainty of paying an unknown amount of un-budgeted money at undetermined
points in time when upgrades come out. I realize of course that small fish
does not like that. C’est la vie…

Alas, this is why momentum is on the Windows/Linux side. Small fish likes
Windows because MS is big fish (so they can ride in their waves). And small
fish likes Linux because they can avoid paying altogether (and ride in the
bigger wave too).

– igor

18

“Jutta Steinhoff” <j-steinhoff@web.de> wrote in message
news:3F0DBD12.E222BE54@web.de…

[…]
Notice, in industrial automation are used often SCADAs or SoftPLCs, that
means you don’t need Momentics.

It is unfortunate fact that for the last several years QNX has concentrated
so much on the IDE side of things that core OS had become somewhat of a
neglected ‘older daughter’, both technologically and ‘marketologically’. It
is understandable because the lack of tools was their biggest problem in the
past, plus they think they can make more money selling dev seats… It
appears their biggest customers don’t want to pay royalties for the runtimes
at all and prefer ‘buyouts’, so why bother.

So, from one extreme they swung into the opposite. Perhaps eventually they
will come to a balanced state, I hope not when it is too late. Nobody wants
to buy an expensive dev seat for a technically obsolete core OS…

But the “little guy” are also big companies which will need a single
QNX system. OTOH, small innovative companies which are often pioneers
for the “big dogs” can’t use QNX for non embedded systems…

The real joke is their marketing stragedy when distributing thousands of
QRTP and QNX6 NC CDs, even in PC Magazines. A system which is unwanted
for non embedded targets is normally not distributed in that way in
order to shock people if they really want to use it …

BTW, did you ever see demos or non commercial software distributed on
fairs or in magazines from Greenhill’s INTEGRITY, WindRiver’s VxWorks
or Jaluna’s C5 (based on CHORUS!) which can even be integrated into
Linux?

QNX is not the only RTOS and we have to accept the decision from QSSL
that they don’t want to take part in the rapidly growing open control
market with QNX target systems where realtime is requested much more
than in the past.

They don’t, apparently. They may be right in that. This market is selling
few runtimes to thousands of small customers, with no development seats.
Maintaining adequate sales infrastructure for a company of 100 people and
$20M annual sales is impractical. And competing with Linux & MS in that area
is even less practical. So they are concentrating on large customers with
custom hardware and high volumes, where neither MS nor Linux do not have a
lot of strong points.

If you are trying to sell and OS that even the OS vendor does not want to
sell in that market, you’re making a big marketing mistake. You’ll be
sailing against the wind.

So let me play a devil’s advocate… You night indeed stop wasting time on
futile resistance. Just use something that is intended/marketed for your
market.

– igor

19

Ian Zagorskih <ianzag@megasignal.com> wrote:

Oh sure, so let’s get rid of small and medium players. Linux and BSD are
awaiting.

no surprise, people come, people go:

http://www.openqnx.com/Article151.html

20

Igor Kovalenko wrote:

“Jutta Steinhoff” <> j-steinhoff@web.de> > wrote in message
news:> 3F0DBD12.E222BE54@web.de> …

[…]

Notice, in industrial automation are used often SCADAs or SoftPLCs, that
means you don’t need Momentics.


It is unfortunate fact that for the last several years QNX has concentrated
so much on the IDE side of things that core OS had become somewhat of a
neglected ‘older daughter’, both technologically and ‘marketologically’. It
is understandable because the lack of tools was their biggest problem in the
past, plus they think they can make more money selling dev seats… It
appears their biggest customers don’t want to pay royalties for the runtimes
at all and prefer ‘buyouts’, so why bother.

So, from one extreme they swung into the opposite. Perhaps eventually they
will come to a balanced state, I hope not when it is too late.

They seem not to have strategies … just adictions.

Nobody wants to buy an expensive dev seat

… when he is asking for a simple runtime!!

for a technically obsolete core OS…


But the “little guy” are also big companies which will need a single
QNX system. OTOH, small innovative companies which are often pioneers
for the “big dogs” can’t use QNX for non embedded systems…

The real joke is their marketing stragedy when distributing thousands of
QRTP and QNX6 NC CDs, even in PC Magazines. A system which is unwanted
for non embedded targets is normally not distributed in that way in
order to shock people if they really want to use it …

BTW, did you ever see demos or non commercial software distributed on
fairs or in magazines from Greenhill’s INTEGRITY, WindRiver’s VxWorks
or Jaluna’s C5 (based on CHORUS!) which can even be integrated into
Linux?

QNX is not the only RTOS and we have to accept the decision from QSSL
that they don’t want to take part in the rapidly growing open control
market with QNX target systems where realtime is requested much more
than in the past.


They don’t, apparently. They may be right in that. This market is selling
few runtimes to thousands of small customers,with no development seats.

It just a fairy tail that only small customers are buying small quantities.

There are also a lot of so called big players which are just buying 20 -
50 runtime licences per year!

Maintaining adequate sales infrastructure for a company of 100 people and
$20M annual sales is impractical.

I don’t know why ‘box shifting’ of runtimes should be impractical??

And competing with Linux & MS in that area is even less practical.

This competition simply happens even it seems not to be ‘practical’ :slight_smile:

So they are concentrating on large customers with
custom hardware and high volumes,

you have to add “…and extremly low prices…”

BTW … the market with ‘large customers’ is very small, restricted and
very competitive.

On the other hand … the number of ‘automation projects’ is nearly
unlimited!

where neither MS nor Linux do not have a lot of strong points.

I can’t follow your logic here …

If you are trying to sell and OS that even the OS vendor does not want to
sell in that market, you’re making a big marketing mistake.

Nonsense … we have invested a lot in QNX6 solutions, but the OS vendor
is just in the process to remove the base of third party SOFTWARE!

This has nothing to do with OUR marketing!

You’ll be sailing against the wind.

So let me play a devil’s advocate… You night indeed stop wasting time on
futile resistance. Just use something that is intended/marketed for your
market.

Sure … that’s exactly what we are doing!! But we are going to serve
BOTH markets as long as QNX6 is still a market for Third Parties.


Armin