“John Nagle” <nagle@downside.com> wrote in message
news:fc95io$mh9$1@inn.qnx.com…
The problem is, QNX management has said that before:
So you think they should not learn from their mistake and try again?
Mario Charest wrote:
“John Nagle” <> nagle@downside.com> > wrote in message
news:fc95io$mh9$> 1@inn.qnx.com> …The problem is, QNX management has said that before:
So you think they should not learn from their mistake and try again?
I think that it will take years to recover the lost credibility.
It may well be too late. For a while in 2001, QNX actually
looked like it might get some market share on desktops for kiosk
applications, Internet appliances, and such. That opportunity
has been lost. The base of people who understood QNX has
shrunk. The few QNX books are out of print. Whole business
areas where QNX once had a presence, like point of sale systems,
have been abandoned. Even the industrial automation people are
now skeptical.
And, in fact, this new “noncommercial” version is more
restrictive than the old one. With the old one, anyone
could run 6.2.1 NC on any machine without “registering” or
needing “license keys”. You could run from a CD and see
if it worked without committing to an install. That no
longer works, or so says the QNX site. I haven’t tried it;
the “create an account” thing isn’t working right. (QNX’s
track record with “registration” isn’t a good one. Remember the
horrors of the 6.3 upgrade version? We had to back off our
DARPA Grand Challenge vehicle to QNX 6.21, where it stayed.
Incidentally, it’s now at UC Santa Cruz, being used by robotics
researchers there.)
Just “opening up” the system isn’t enough to attract developers.
It takes work by the vendor. Look how much time, money, and effort
Sun had to put into Java, which they give away, to get market share.
I think there was a huge opportunity for QNX back in 2001, that
it was missed, and that it’s too late now.
John Nagle
Some people might be under impression that this was intended to change
something. I don’t think so. Their business model is still much the same,
the only thing different is that you can get the source code now. So what?
You can get source for Microsoft… You could always get source for QNX too,
it just used to cost a quarter milllion $ or so, which was peanuts for
customers who could actually afford to tinker with the OS source in the
first place… (Cisco, et all).
Will it be useful? Perhaps. For customers who need to debug tricky things on
custom hardware, it certainly will be helpful. But it’s not going to change
rules of the game. Will it entice people to write code for QNX? Only if it
is used for some widely-available hardware that many people can tinker with.
They need another Audrey or something to that effect. Get it on PS3, then it
might interesting…
“John Nagle” <nagle@downside.com> wrote in message
news:fcn4mc$ddo$1@inn.qnx.com…
Mario Charest wrote:
“John Nagle” <> nagle@downside.com> > wrote in message
news:fc95io$mh9$> 1@inn.qnx.com> …The problem is, QNX management has said that before:
So you think they should not learn from their mistake and try again?I think that it will take years to recover the lost credibility.
It may well be too late. For a while in 2001, QNX actually
looked like it might get some market share on desktops for kiosk
applications, Internet appliances, and such. That opportunity
has been lost. The base of people who understood QNX has
shrunk. The few QNX books are out of print. Whole business
areas where QNX once had a presence, like point of sale systems,
have been abandoned. Even the industrial automation people are
now skeptical.And, in fact, this new “noncommercial” version is more
restrictive than the old one. With the old one, anyone
could run 6.2.1 NC on any machine without “registering” or
needing “license keys”. You could run from a CD and see
if it worked without committing to an install. That no
longer works, or so says the QNX site. I haven’t tried it;
the “create an account” thing isn’t working right. (QNX’s
track record with “registration” isn’t a good one. Remember the
horrors of the 6.3 upgrade version? We had to back off our
DARPA Grand Challenge vehicle to QNX 6.21, where it stayed.
Incidentally, it’s now at UC Santa Cruz, being used by robotics
researchers there.)Just “opening up” the system isn’t enough to attract developers.
It takes work by the vendor. Look how much time, money, and effort
Sun had to put into Java, which they give away, to get market share.I think there was a huge opportunity for QNX back in 2001, that
it was missed, and that it’s too late now.John Nagle