Earlier this week, Lineo announced that they have licensed a real-time technology patent from RTLinux creator Victor Yodaiken to allow Lineo “to provide OEM customers with high performance, real-time embedded solutions integrating FSM's patented techniques of adding real-time support with the Lineo Embedix embedded… operating system platform.”

In order to clarify the implication of this license on Lineo's RTAI-based products and projects, Lineo today issued the following statement regarding the company's continued commitment to RTAI . . .

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Hello all,

As many of you know, Lineo's engineers, working with the other members of the RTAI development team, have provided many key elements of RTAI — which uses an architecture fundamentally similar to that used by RTLinux.

Some time ago, a patent describing this architecture was granted, resulting in heated debate around the topic with arguments ranging from: “it's brilliant!” and “there is too much prior art”, or “it isn't enforcable” to “maybe it isn't enforcable or valid but its been granted and my lawyers don't want to go to court for this . . . we'll stick with VxWorks”.

Now, in the closing hours of this debate, still without resolution on many points, Lineo has negotiated a patent license for that technology, which deserves clarification.

• Lineo established this license in response to an existing patent that presented fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) in the minds of some embedded developers who would otherwise utilize the robust RTAI open source technology.

• No matter what your position on software patents, or the on validity of this dual-kernel real-time technique patent, our recent licensing now provides embedded system developers with a known safe option for utilizing this process regardless of the precise implementation method of that patented architecture (e.g. RTAI).

• The availability of this Lineo license removes the perceived FUD and allows more developers to use solutions like RTAI, which implement an architecture described by the FSMLabs patent.

• It should be pointed out that this patent license has no effect on the software license(s) which accompany RTAI.

• Lineo has heavily invested into RTAI as a significant contributor of code to this open source project. We will continue to focus our support and investments on RTAI and other embedded real-time solutions which use the patented architecture.

• Lineo's charter is to provide OEMs with viable options for embedded systems deployment across a wide spectrum of embedded architectures and configurations. Our technical and business roadmaps drive the company to add options that provide OEMs with greater freedom, flexibility and opportunity. At the same time, we need to provide assurance to our customers that there is no legal risk in the use of this technology.

I hope this has helped to clarify what Lineo has done and why we have done it. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to forward them on to me.

Best Regards,

Dave Beal
Product Director
Embedix Linux Family

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