[ECOS] how many eCOS users?

[ECOS] how many eCOS users?

[Grant Edwards]

I'm trying to generate enough of a warm fuzzy feeling about eCOS in
upper management to get them to go along with my recommendation to use
it in a new product line.

So far, the big advantage of eCOS is that we can give customers a
pre-configured eCOS setup (including device drivers for our proprietary
hardware) and a complete set of development tools if they want to
develop their own applications.  The Linux synthetic target is also a
plus, though other vendors have similar things for their products that
run under MS-Windows.

The big disadvantage of eCOS is it's age -- or lack thereof to be
precise.  Management has heard of VRTX and Nucleus: those products
have been around for 10-15 years (in various incarnations with various
vendors).

One of the questions I know they're going to ask is how many people
are using eCOS in products?

Is there any estimate of how many real projects are using eCOS?

-- 
Grant Edwards
grante@visi.com

Re: [ECOS] how many eCOS users?

[Andrew Lunn]

> I'm trying to generate enough of a warm fuzzy feeling about eCOS in
> upper management to get them to go along with my recommendation to use
> it in a new product line.

I had to do this a few months ago. I managed it and so far im very
pleased with eCos.
 
> So far, the big advantage of eCOS is that we can give customers a
> pre-configured eCOS setup (including device drivers for our proprietary
> hardware) and a complete set of development tools if they want to
> develop their own applications.  The Linux synthetic target is also a
> plus, though other vendors have similar things for their products that
> run under MS-Windows.

To me other big selling points were source code for everything. I also
looked at VRTX. I kept asking about access to source code and reading
between the lines the answer was always, yes you can have the source
code, but no we don't want you to have it.

I've found sources for the tools and eCos realy usefull. I had a very
strange problem with LD inserting extra 0x00 into the object code. It
was not reproducable by anyone else. It was not until i stepped
thought the code with a debugger and found the fwrite() statement that
it became clear it was a bug in Solaris's NFS server!

Another big thing is Cygnus's support. The support of eCos is realy
good if you have a support contract. This is something i am realy
pleased with. Fast and accurate responces, typically withing a
day. They have made minor modifications to eCos to help me, they are
happy to answer questions about how the internals work etc, they realy
know how the hardware works. You talk to the engineers who actually
wrote the code.
 
The uptake of the sourceware version seems to of been slow to start
with. Its now starting to take off. If you read the email on this list
you see more and more ports going on to other hardware. Also people
are starting to work on other, non platform dependant things like
TCP/IP stacks. This open source development of eCos could very well be
the key to its success. Cygnus has limited resources for porting to
new hardware and providing new facilities. As Linux has shown, the
amount of resource on the Net is hugh and some realy amazing things
can be done.

> One of the questions I know they're going to ask is how many people
> are using eCOS in products?

ASCOM will be for the PowerLine products. 

        Andrew Lunn

____________________________

Andrew Lunn
Research Engineer
Phone +41 62 889 52 97
Fax +41 62 889 52 90
Andrew.Lunn@ascom.ch

Ascom Systec Ltd.
Applicable Research & Technology
Gewerbepark
CH-5506 Maegenwil
Switzerland

www.ascom.com/art

[ECOS] Re: how many eCOS users?

[Bart Veer]

>>>>> "Grant" == Grant Edwards <grante@visi.com> writes:

    Grant> I'm trying to generate enough of a warm fuzzy feeling about
    Grant> eCOS in upper management to get them to go along with my
    Grant> recommendation to use it in a new product line.

    Grant> So far, the big advantage of eCOS is that we can give
    Grant> customers a pre-configured eCOS setup (including device
    Grant> drivers for our proprietary hardware) and a complete set of
    Grant> development tools if they want to develop their own
    Grant> applications. The Linux synthetic target is also a plus,
    Grant> though other vendors have similar things for their products
    Grant> that run under MS-Windows.

    Grant> The big disadvantage of eCOS is it's age -- or lack thereof
    Grant> to be precise. Management has heard of VRTX and Nucleus:
    Grant> those products have been around for 10-15 years (in various
    Grant> incarnations with various vendors).

    Grant> One of the questions I know they're going to ask is how
    Grant> many people are using eCOS in products?

    Grant> Is there any estimate of how many real projects are using
    Grant> eCOS?

The open source nature of eCos means it is just about impossible to
get a sensible estimate, but Cygnus is very pleased with the uptake to
date. I believe that the number of downloads from
sourceware.cygnus.com is ~15K and this number is still going up
rapidly. We do not know how many additional downloads happen from the
mirror sites, but since sourceware.cygnus.com is regularly overloaded
the mirror sites should boost the numbers significantly. Also we do
not know how many copies of eCos get distributed by means other than
direct ftp. Obviously only some fraction of these downloads will be
used for commercial projects, there will also be academic projects and
hobbyists. Having that many people look at the source code is of
course a good thing: http://www.opensource.org/for-suits.html is a
possible starting point if management needs convincing about that.

To put 15K+ downloads into perspective, one rather dubious comparison
would be with the uptake of Linux. Using the figures provided by
Forbes magazine ( http://www.forbes.com/forbes/98/0810/6203094s1.htm ),
after the first year there were an estimated 1000 users of Linux.

Information such as the number and nature of eCos support contracts is
considered commercially sensitive. A few customers such as Ascom are
happy to make their involvement with eCos public knowledge, other
customers value confidentiality.

The Cygnus commercial web pages contain a lot of information that
should appeal to upper management. Of particular interest would be:

  http://www.cygnus.com/ecos/micro.html
  http://www.cygnus.com/about/index.html

If there is a possibility of an eCos support contract, you may wish to
contact ecos-info@cygnus.com. The people on that list will be happy to
assist you in selling eCos to upper management, and have quite a bit
of experience in doing so :-) They should also be able provide you
with some other customer testimonials.

Bart Veer // eCos net maintainer