Updated May 23, 2005 — Wind River, the world's largest embedded software company, has embarked upon a strategic shift toward embedded Linux, beginning with an Oct. 3, 2003, tools announcement it called “Just the first step.”

Find out about all of Wind River's steps toward embedded Linux below . . .

• Linux, open technology prominent at Wind River developer confab — Apr. 18, 2005 — Embedded Linux and “Open Perspectives” will comprise two of the six tracks at Wind River's 2005 User Conference, May 22-25 in Orlando, Fla. The Linux track will include “business and technological perspective,” the company says, offering presentations from OSDL, Jaluna, GoAhead Software, Intel, Datalight, Solid, PTR Group, and Coverity.
• Wind River: there's money in Linux devices, but not for MontaVista — Apr. 6, 2005 — Wind River CEO Ken Klein says he expects Linux to account for close to half his company's business within three to five years. Klein criticizes pureplay Linux vendor MontaVista for trying to “sell free software.”
• Ken Klein's ESC keynote: five things you can do to avoid becoming roadkill — Mar. 9, 2005 — Wind River CEO Ken Klein discusses embedded developer survival strategies at the 2005 Embedded Systems Conference in San Francisco.
• Wind River completes embedded Linux metamorphosis — Feb. 14, 2005 — Wind River ships a pre-release version of its first embedded Linux distribution, and says it has delivered 1,000 “developer seats” for the Carrier Grade Linux 2.0.
• Wind River scoops up ScopeTools — Jan. 24 — Wind River has acquired the tools division of long-time partner Real-Time Innovations (RTI), including 11 employees and IP (intellectual property) rights to RTI's well-known ScopeTools.
• Tools agreement between Green Hills and Wind River erodes — Jan. 19, 2005 — Green Hills Software has filed an antitrust suit against competitor Wind River, alleging the embedded giant blocked it from effectively marketing development tools for VxWorks, Wind River's flagship embedded operating system.
• Wind River exec departs for virtual platform startup — Nov. 29, 2005 — Former Wind River tools chief Michel Genard has left the company for a marketing position at Jaluna. Genard speaks candidly recent executive turn-over at Wind River.
• Wind River launches its first embedded Linux, aimed at telecom — Nov. 1, 2004 — Wind River's inaugural Linux product, “Linux Platform for Network Equipment, Linux Edition,” targets makers of telecommunications equipment who use Linux on the control plane along with Wind River's proprietary VxWorks real-time operating system (RTOS) on the data plane. It includes middleware that lets Linux and VxWorks processes communicate. Additionally, the company has updated its Eclipse-based Workbench development suite to work with 2.6-series kernels, and has upgraded the tool to Eclipse 3.0, among other advances.
• Embedded Linux promise helps boost Wind River earnings — May 18, 2004 — Wind River reported better-than-forecast financial results for its first quarter of fiscal 2005, citing a healthier economy, improving execution, and a strategic move to a dual-OS approach including embedded Linux. Subscription-based licensing, already the norm among embedded Linux tools and services providers, was also cited as a major factor.
• Wind River partners with Red Hat on embedded Linux distro/support — Feb. 23, 2004 — Calling embedded Linux and VxWorks “the standards in device software development,” Wind River today announced a dual operating system strategy that adds a newly developed embedded Linux distribution — “Red Hat Embedded Linux” — alongside its proprietary VxWorks real-time operating system (RTOS). Additionally, the company says it will soon release a new Eclipse-based integrated development environment (IDE) that targets development of embedded systems and devices running both Linux and VxWorks; that it will soon offer support for both OSes within its set of application- and market-specific embedded software “platforms”; and that it has added a new option of per-developer-seat licensing as an alternative to the traditional royalty-based licensing model for its VxWorks RTOS.
• Wind River joins CELF — Jan. 8th, 2003 — Wind River announces it has joined the CE Linux Forum (CELF), an industry group focused on the advancement of Linux as an open source platform for consumer electronics devices.
• Wind River's next embedded Linux step: development services — Dec. 8, 2003 — Wind River will formally enter the embedded Linux services market, competing with more established embedded Linux vendors like MontaVista, TimeSys, LynuxWorks, and Metrowerks. Wind River says it does not currently plan to market its own brand of embedded Linux. However, its new plan to offer embedded Linux tools and services pits it squarely against the leaders of an embedded Linux market differentiated primarily by exactly that: tools and services.
• Wind River joins OSDL, mulls Carrier Grade Linux strategy — Dec. 1, 2003 — Wind River announced that it plans to contribute to the OSDL's Carrier Grade Linux (CGL) working group. The company says its VxWorks operating system has a strong presence in the telecom and network infrastructure markets served by CGL, and that its customers say they want to use CGL alongside VxWorks — prompting the company's decision to get behind Carrier Grade Linux.
• Wind River shifts tools strategy toward Eclipse — Dec. 1, 2003 — Wind River announced that it has joined the Eclipse Consortium, an industry group devoted to an open cross-vendor platform for development tools integration. Development tools like Wind River's flagship Tornado integrated development environment (IDE) comprise a significant share of the company's revenues. However, Wind River has recently begun to lower the high profile status of Tornado, and the company says that it is committed to deploying and using Eclipse, although it declines to state which products will support — or be based on — Eclipse.
• NEWS FLASH: Wind River hops on embedded Linux bandwagon — Oct. 3, 2003 — Wind River, by far the world's largest embedded software company, today launched its first official support for embedded Linux. For its initial foray into the embedded Linux market, the company is targeting its $4,000 visionProbe II hardware bring-up tool at embedded Linux system-level software development. Company officials say they plan a step-by-step approach toward embedded Linux, suggesting more Linux-related announcements lie ahead for the embedded software giant.

 
This article was originally published on LinuxDevices.com and has been donated to the open source community by QuinStreet Inc. Please visit LinuxToday.com for up-to-date news and articles about Linux and open source.