GHS CEO predicts death of embedded Linux tools market
Jan 15, 2004 — by LinuxDevices Staff — from the LinuxDevices Archive — viewsIn an editorial published by EE Times, Dan O'Dowd makes dire forecasts about the embedded Linux tools market. O'Dowd opines, essentially, that the Linux tools market will die because anyone willing to pay for tools will also be willing to pay for a higher quality, proprietary operating system.
O'Dowd is president and CEO of Green Hills, an embedded tools company with its own proprietary RTOS.
O'Dowd further asserts that in order to work well, tools must have a well-defined target environment, which is impossible with Linux because of the lack of a single dominant implementation. This seems counter to the trend for Linux tools vendors toward distribution agnosticism (Metrowerks, TimeSys, and Wind River tools all work with any Linux).
Most of O'Dowd's arguments apply to highly resource-constrained systems, which, his arguments seem to imply, are the only embedded applications where tools are actually useful.
Green Hills announced Linux support for its MULTI-IDE development tool in Feb. or 2003, and for RTLinux in December of 2001.
Be sure to also read Kevin Dankwardt's rebuttal, sent as an open letter to the EE Times.
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