I’m trying to reconstruct the timeline of the restrictions in
the QNX NC versions. Is this right?
QNX 6.0 NC:
Everything worked.
QNX 6.1 NC:
? (need more info here)
QNX 6.2 NC:
No Eclipse IDE.
No ability to make a boot image
QNX 6.3 “evaluation”:
Registration required for download.
Mandatory online registration at boot.
After 30 days:
No Eclipse IDE.
No QCC compiler.
No ability to make a boot image (?)
John Nagle wrote:
I’m trying to reconstruct the timeline of the restrictions in
the QNX NC versions. Is this right?QNX 6.0 NC:
Everything worked.
x86 only
QNX 6.1 NC:
? (need more info here)
same as 6.0 but included all targets (at that time MIPS, PPC, x86 and ARM).
QNX 6.2 NC:
No Eclipse IDE.
No ability to make a boot image
x86 and armle targets only and you could download Eclipse.
QNX 6.3 “evaluation”:
Registration required for download.
Mandatory online registration at boot.
After 30 days:
No Eclipse IDE.
No QCC compiler.
No ability to make a boot image (?)
You still have access to Eclipse, just not any of the QNX closed-source
extensions. Basically renders it back to the state of the version from
eclipse.org with the CDT already added in.
chris
John Nagle wrote:
QNX 6.3 “evaluation”:
Registration required for download.
Mandatory online registration at boot.
After 30 days:
No Eclipse IDE.
No QCC compiler.
No ability to make a boot image (?)
The Registration is far from mandatory unless you are talking about the license key, any key works just fine though. And it doesn’t have to be “After 30 days” either.
My biggest frustration with 630 is there is too much in the TDKs.
Evan
Evan Hillas wrote:
My biggest frustration with 630 is there is too much in the TDKs.
Actually, the TDK approach may provide a way out of the NC
mess. Volume users will need at least TDK, which implies they’ll
need to buy the appropriate number of QNX licenses.
If you need at least one TDK to ship a production product,
there’s no risk for QSSL/Harmon in having a powerful NC version.
The 3D Graphics TDK really ought to be free, though.
You want hobbyist users porting games to QNX
and pressuring graphics card makers to open up their APIs.
That’s how you get your OpenGL system well debugged.
Besides, it’s mostly Mesa, which is an open source
implementation of OpenGL.
The game issue is real. I’ve heard mainframe execs at
IBM complaining that one problem they have is that young
programmers have no interest in the mainframe APIs because
they don’t run games.
If fewer people are learning how to use your OS than
are leaving it, it’s dying.
John Nagle
John Nagle <nagle@downside.com> wrote:
JN > I’m trying to reconstruct the timeline of the restrictions in
JN > the QNX NC versions. Is this right?
QNX 4.x:
You had to pay for everything. Nothing was free.
And QNX popularity grew like wildfire.
That and the fact that the actual QNX developers took time to answer
questions from users.
Personally, I’d rather go back to the days when you had to pay a
reasonable fee and got quite decent support from QSSL for it.
Don’t get me wrong. The support is still very good. But it’s not like it
was. I mean, if you posted a bug report at 9:30 in the morning that was
easily reproducable, by 3:30 in the afternoon there was a fix posted on
the BBS.
Ah, the good old days. I know some will argue with me. That’s their
right. But this is my opinion and I’m sticking to it.
JN > QNX 6.0 NC:
JN > Everything worked.
JN > QNX 6.1 NC:
JN > ? (need more info here)
JN > QNX 6.2 NC:
JN > No Eclipse IDE.
JN > No ability to make a boot image
JN > QNX 6.3 “evaluation”:
JN > Registration required for download.
JN > Mandatory online registration at boot.
JN > After 30 days:
JN > No Eclipse IDE.
JN > No QCC compiler.
JN > No ability to make a boot image (?)
Evan Hillas <evanh@clear.net.nz> wrote:
My biggest frustration with 630 is there is too much in the TDKs.
I have to agree with you on this one. I’ve got a couple problems
with the TDKs, the first one is that if a paying customer (never
mind the NC user) migrates from 6.21B to 6.30 they loose functionality.
This is functionality that they had available and now are being asked
to pay more to use, this can discourage people from upgrading, since
you are actually paying for bug fixes (which your support contract was
supposed to cover, but doesn’t since you had to pay for the upgrade) and
then you potentially have to pay for some TDKs to get some functionality
back.
Some of the more noticable things that are now in the TDKs:
ipfilter used to be free, not even part of the OS, now it’s part of the
OS, and you have to purchase the advanced networking TDK to get it. This
is crazy, someone can just take the existing ported source and apply the
patches for the new versions to it. The other crazy part is that most people
that might want ipfilter probably don’t need the other advanced networking
components like IPv6. Not terribly smart bundling of the modules in the
TDKs.
This essentially says that those putting the packaged together for the
various TDKs don’t understand their customers. This is also true of
the MP3 Codecs… don’t they know that developers like to listent to their
MP3s while coding? It’s terribly foolish to make your development environment
LESS attractive to the developers you hope to attract.
My biggest beefs with the TDKs are that QSS has demonstrated complete
ignorance and arrogance towards thier developers. The TDKs acknowledge
that some customers/developers would rather pay a one-time per-project fee
instead of runtime licensing. This is fine. The OS itself is available
as runtimes or through per-project negotiations, as one-time per-project
fee. So as far as the core OS is concerned, QSS acknowledges that there are
two types of customers, namely those that want runtimes, and those that
want a fixed per-project one-time cost.
With the TDKs, they only acknowledge the existense of ONE of these types
of customers. This is foolish. There are smaller customers that may want
to use the technology in the TDKs, but that don’t anticipate volumes to
justify the one-time per-project fees associated with the TDKs. QSS has
basically forced these customers to persue other OSs for their projects.
How stupid. It can’t hurt QSS to actually offer the TDKs with a runtime
license as well as the one-time fee.
The other issue with the TDKs regards evaluation. There is none.
These TDKs can be quite pricey, some as much as $25K. How do you
determine that a TDK will allow you to actually do what you need if
you can’t evaluate it? It can be pretty hard to justify a $25K expense
just to experiment with a TDK to see if the technolgy is suitable for
your project, you are more likely to look elsewere.
I really don’t understand why QSS has chosen to essentially make their
technology available to smaller companies with smaller projects. It
can only be arrogance, and in the long-run, arrogance in the marketplace
rarely spells success.
Martin Zimmerman camz@passageway.com
Camz Software Enterprises www.passageway.com/camz/qnx/
QNX Programming & Consulting www.qnxzone.com
camz@passageway.com wrote:
cpc > Evan Hillas <evanh@clear.net.nz> wrote:
My biggest frustration with 630 is there is too much in the TDKs.
. . .
cpc > I really don’t understand why QSS has chosen to essentially make their
cpc > technology available to smaller companies with smaller projects. It
cpc > can only be arrogance, and in the long-run, arrogance in the marketplace
cpc > rarely spells success.
cpc > Cheers,
cpc > Camz.
I assume here:
cpc > technology available to smaller companies with smaller projects. It
you mean (un)available?
Hi John…
John Nagle wrote:
…
If fewer people are learning how to use your OS than
are leaving it, it’s dying.
It seems that QNX will die indeed. Maybe when is dead, it will then
become open source…
Regards…
Miguel.
John Nagle
camz@passageway.com wrote:
Evan Hillas <> evanh@clear.net.nz> > wrote:
My biggest frustration with 630 is there is too much in the TDKs.
My biggest beefs with the TDKs are that QSS has demonstrated complete
ignorance and arrogance towards thier developers. The TDKs acknowledge
that some customers/developers would rather pay a one-time per-project fee
instead of runtime licensing. This is fine. The OS itself is available
as runtimes
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ??
No … that’s not correct! There is until today NO RUNTIME license
available for QNX6.3!!
But … that’s not a problem. There are runtime licenses for e.g.
MS-Windows, VxWorks and at next for the ‘Integrity PC’ of GHS.
If QSSL isn’t interested in that type of business … the competitors
will do it for them 
I really don’t understand why QSS has chosen to essentially make their
technology available to smaller companies with
a lots of
smaller projects.
The revenues from smaller projects in the automations industry takes 30%
of their whole revenues and they are in the process to cut it.
The “Heros of the Manufacturing” are dying …
It
can only be arrogance, and in the long-run, arrogance in the marketplace
rarely spells success.
It happens already …
Regards
Armin
The 3D Graphics TDK really ought to be free, though.
You want hobbyist users porting games to QNX
and pressuring graphics card makers to open up their APIs.
That’s how you get your OpenGL system well debugged.
Besides, it’s mostly Mesa, which is an open source
implementation of OpenGL.
Excellent point. OpenGL ought to be included for free. One of the many
reasons we will probably never upgrade beyond 6.2.1. We (Clemson
University/Robotics) has been using QNX exclusively to develop all realtime
experiments in the lab for many years now. It is a wonderful OS and a great
tool for engineering students to build experiments fast. Linux does not even
come close in terms of ease of use, documentation or performance. Yet we are
resisting an upgrade, partly due to all these restrictions on 6.3.
Vilas
“Bill Caroselli” <qtps@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:cpqan3$11c$2@inn.qnx.com…
John Nagle <> nagle@downside.com> > wrote:
JN > I’m trying to reconstruct the timeline of the restrictions in
JN > the QNX NC versions. Is this right?QNX 4.x:
You had to pay for everything. Nothing was free.
And QNX popularity grew like wildfire.
That’s quite true, Windows was never free, nor VxWorks yet they are the most
successfull in their market place.
About a year ago somebody at QSSL told me that they would put less focus on
the “free” community; simply because they are not paying the bills, and I
agree with that although to some degree it sadens me. I think the argument
that a free version is needed to let people learn about it it total
bullshit.
In Quebec (don’t know in other part of Canada) Welfare people get dental
services for free. Yet if you talk to dentists theyewill tell you welfare
customers are most difficult customer to please and that they complain all
the time about the quality of the services they get.
QSS in the QNX2 and QNX4 days was successful because they use to appeal to
the technical people who then were able to convince management of its
capability, sometime it worked sometime it didn’t. I well remember in these
days people complaining that QSS should gear them self to appeal to
investors and managers direclty to make sure of there success. That’s
exactly what they are doing these days, playing the bull shit game and
targeting real decision maker. That’s what their decisions are based on,
not the winning of the small customers and people using the free version.
They have to listen to the voice of the people with money.
I mean as a company QSS must be doing something right because somebody gave
them 138Millions, more then 5 time their annual revenus. Please people get
some perspective here.
That and the fact that the actual QNX developers took time to answer
questions from users.
They are still doing it Bill, but not to me or to you but to bigger customer
that are paying big dollars for the support from senior developer. That
means support from the senior staff has increase tremendously in value which
is a good thing for QNX but not to you 
Personally, I’d rather go back to the days when you had to pay a
reasonable fee and got quite decent support from QSSL for it.Don’t get me wrong. The support is still very good. But it’s not like it
was. I mean, if you posted a bug report at 9:30 in the morning that was
easily reproducable, by 3:30 in the afternoon there was a fix posted on
the BBS.Ah, the good old days. I know some will argue with me. That’s their
right. But this is my opinion and I’m sticking to it.
JN > QNX 6.0 NC:
JN > Everything worked.JN > QNX 6.1 NC:
JN > ? (need more info here)JN > QNX 6.2 NC:
JN > No Eclipse IDE.
JN > No ability to make a boot imageJN > QNX 6.3 “evaluation”:
JN > Registration required for download.
JN > Mandatory online registration at boot.
JN > After 30 days:
JN > No Eclipse IDE.
JN > No QCC compiler.
JN > No ability to make a boot image (?)
I can keep silent no longer !
I have been working with QNX for over 17 years. It is a matter of policy
for me that I will no longer work in any other environment.
For those obsessed with chanting doom and gloom for QNX
please stop using it and just go somewhere else.
I would like to see QNX grow and prosper.
But it won’t happen with you folks crying death to QNX.
So, use it, or shut up and go away.
Miguel Simon <simon@ou.edu> wrote:
MS > Hi John…
MS > John Nagle wrote:
If fewer people are learning how to use your OS than
are leaving it, it’s dying.
MS > It seems that QNX will die indeed. Maybe when is dead, it will then
MS > become open source…
MS > Regards…
MS > Miguel.
John Nagle
Bill Caroselli wrote:
I can keep silent no longer !
I have been working with QNX for over 17 years. It is a matter of policy
for me that I will no longer work in any other environment.For those obsessed with chanting doom and gloom for QNX
please stop using it and just go somewhere else.I would like to see QNX grow and prosper.
But it won’t happen with you folks crying death to QNX.
So, use it, or shut up and go away.
It doesn’t work that way.
QSSL can shrink the QNX user base. Arguably, it
has adopted policies intended to do so.
This typically happens in companies where the inside sales
force has become too influential. The inside sales people
make most of their commissions reselling to a small number
of large customers. So they want efforts focused on the
big customers. The same big customers. Over time, the
company becomes marginalized, loses mind share, and
gets run over by others selling into a larger
customer base. Yes, only a small fraction of the small
customers ever become big. But that’s where the new
big customers come from.
That’s what happened to many of the old-line
computer companies. DEC. Unisys. Honeywell.
They’re not totally dead. You can still buy a
UNISYS mainframe or an ALPHA server. But it’s
replacement business only, and it’s smaller every year.
John Nagle
Armin Steinhoff <a-steinhoff@web.de> wrote:
No … that’s not correct! There is until today NO RUNTIME license
available for QNX6.3!!
Call your sales rep, they exist, just like they do for 6.2.1.
Cheers,
Camz.
–
Martin Zimmerman camz@passageway.com
Camz Software Enterprises www.passageway.com/camz/qnx/
QNX Programming & Consulting www.qnxzone.com
Mario Charest postmaster@127.0.0.1 wrote:
About a year ago somebody at QSSL told me that they would put less focus on
the “free” community; simply because they are not paying the bills, and I
agree with that although to some degree it sadens me. I think the argument
that a free version is needed to let people learn about it it total
bullshit.
In the general case you are probably correct, but I don’t believe this to be
the case with QNX. The problem is that the marketing efforts of QSS have
either been abysimmally poor or non-existent, regardless of the reason, they
have never truely managed to aquire a significant percentage of “mindshare”.
There are projects (large and small) that don’t even consider QNX, and for
the most part it is because they don’t know it even exists. The “free”
versions of QNX have been far more successfull at marketing QNX to prospective
new customers than any of their marketing efforts in the past.
QSS in the QNX2 and QNX4 days was successful because they use to appeal to
the technical people who then were able to convince management of its
capability, sometime it worked sometime it didn’t. I well remember in these
In the pre-dotcom boom, it was more common for the technical people to be
given the authority to choose the OS and hardware platform for a project.
Things are different now, and it is rare that the OS or hardware platform
is chosen on purely technical merit. QSS’s success is attributable to one
simple thing: The quality of the product. QNX has always been an excellent
product. The company has been a success because of this and in spite of
thier marketing efforts.
targeting real decision maker. That’s what their decisions are based on,
not the winning of the small customers and people using the free version.
They have to listen to the voice of the people with money.
The problem is exactly what John points out. Eventually you need NEW
customers, and if you are too focused on just the “big” customers of
today you miss out. The next big customer is a small customer today, if
you aren’t attracting small customers then your future growth is in some
serious trouble. You also need mindshare, people need to know about you
and have at least heard something about your company so that you will be
considered for new projects at new companies.
Simply put, a business plan that only focuses on large customers and that
alienates small and medium customers will not be successful in the long
term.
I mean as a company QSS must be doing something right because somebody gave
them 138Millions, more then 5 time their annual revenus. Please people get
some perspective here.
Actually, we don’t know Harman’s true reason for aquiring QSS. According to
a recent article in the December 15, 2004 issue of SD Times the speculation
is quite different. Here is the relvant quote:
“Apparently, the impetus for the acquisition was a lack of
confidencein QNX’s longevity. Twenty-three years of growth
and profitability were not enough for the automotive
industry to alleviate fears about the company’s future
direction.”
I have no difficulty believing this to be the actual reason for Harman’s
acquisition.
That and the fact that the actual QNX developers took time to answer
questions from users.They are still doing it Bill, but not to me or to you but to bigger customer
that are paying big dollars for the support from senior developer. That
means support from the senior staff has increase tremendously in value which
is a good thing for QNX but not to you >
Actually, this isn’t quite the case. There are some people at QSS that are
making the effort to help people in the newsgroups, but for the most part
they are being actively discouraged from this activity. Rumours are that
some have been reprimanded for it, and many more are gun-shy and silent. It
does not bode well to have a workforce that is afraid to help people out.
There are exceptions, as you know, but their numbers are dwidnling at an
alarming rate.
The release cycle has also been significantly extended. We used to have
patches available that addressed major bugs available within a week or
month of the bug being discovered. Now any bug fix, regardless of whether
it is critical, major, or minor is bundled up into a “service pack” patch
and may not become available for 6-8 months after the discover and fixing
of even a critical bug. Again, there have been some exceptions posted in
the myQNX area, but for the most part we are subjected to 6-8 months between
patches or releases, and even for paying customers if you don’t have a
support plan, you often can’t get the patches.
There is priority support that gets you these bug fixes sooner, but the
fees associated with them are outragously expensive, potentially costing
more than the annual salaries of two experienced full-time developers.
Bugs in the core product may not get priority for fixing if a priority
support customer has not asked for them, at some point along the way,
the core product took second stage to big customer demands. QSS cares
less about their core product than they do about a few select customers.
Ultimately, that will catch up with them, I’d argue that it’s already
happening.
Carefull observation of QSS’s business practices since the release of
QNX RTP (aka QNX 6.0) reveals a picture of a company in financial
trouble. Efforts have been concentrated on ways to put a price tag
on every aspect of the business. We’ve seen features removed from the
NC versions to encourage / force more sales of dev seatsr. We have seen
the support of the SE edition lag behind the PE edition in an attempt
to encourage people to buy PE instead of SE. We’ve seen bug fixes and
critical patches that were formerly available for free to paying customers
that had registered their products become unavailable without support
plans. Even bugs fixed for a paying customer with a support plan not
become available for significant periods of time, or until a priority
customer requests the same bug fixed. We’ve seen bug fixes in the core
product take a backseat to priority support customers. We’ve seen
major functionality removed between versions and re-positioned in TDKs
marketed only at large customers with no business model for runtime
deployment. We’ve seen upgrade fees applied even when support plans
are valid. We’ve seen release cycles that are often longer that a standard
support plan, making the purchase of support somewhat of a gamble as
well.
What we have seen is a desperate attempt to suck every possible dollar
from customers at the expense of all else. Sometimes at the expense of
keeping the customer at all.
Let’s hope that the focus will shift back to the product now that Harman
has alleviated the need for desperate focus on nickle-and-diming the
customer to stay alive.
Cheers,
Camz.
–
Martin Zimmerman camz@passageway.com
Camz Software Enterprises www.passageway.com/camz/qnx/
QNX Programming & Consulting www.qnxzone.com
John Nagle wrote:
The game issue is real. I’ve heard mainframe execs at
IBM complaining that one problem they have is that young
programmers have no interest in the mainframe APIs because
they don’t run games.
One of the guys I worked with at the CBC ported Moria to the VAXen… it
was much more fun than running the text editor.
–
Chris Herborth (cherborth@qnx.com)
Never send a monster to do the work of an evil scientist.
camz@passageway.com wrote:
cpc > Actually, we don’t know Harman’s true reason for aquiring QSS. According to
cpc > a recent article in the December 15, 2004 issue of SD Times the speculation
cpc > is quite different. Here is the relvant quote:
cpc > “Apparently, the impetus for the acquisition was a lack of
cpc > confidencein QNX’s longevity. Twenty-three years of growth
cpc > and profitability were not enough for the automotive
cpc > industry to alleviate fears about the company’s future
cpc > direction.”
Do you know who’s quote this was?
camz@passageway.com wrote:
Armin Steinhoff <> a-steinhoff@web.de> > wrote:
No … that’s not correct! There is until today NO RUNTIME license
available for QNX6.3!!
Call your sales rep, they exist,
Yes, the sales rep exist … and we have ask for it several times!
A runtime CD for x86 systems is NOT available!
And this is the case for 6.2.1 and 6.3 …
Regards
Armin
just like they do for 6.2.1.
Cheers,
Camz.
Armin Steinhoff <a-steinhoff@web.de> wrote:
A runtime CD for x86 systems is NOT available!
And this is the case for 6.2.1 and 6.3 …
Why should there be a runtime CD for any of them? It is presumed that you
would be building custom systems, and the runtime configuration for each
project would be different, making a “runtime CD” impractical. You can
make your own from your development environment, which is what you are
expected to do.
Cheers,
Camz.
–
Martin Zimmerman camz@passageway.com
Camz Software Enterprises www.passageway.com/camz/qnx/
QNX Programming & Consulting www.qnxzone.com
camz@passageway.com wrote:
Mario Charest postmaster@127.0.0.1 wrote:
[ clip …]
Let’s hope that the focus will shift back to the product now that Harman
has alleviated the need for desperate focus on nickle-and-diming the
customer to stay alive.
You are dreaming … Harman has a ‘desperate focus on nickle-and-diming’
Regards
Armin