RE: [ECOS] Re: Is eCos project still alive?

RE: [ECOS] Re: Is eCos project still alive?

[Loginov Alexander]

.........
> Because that's the last time somebody paid developers to do the
> work involved in a public "release".

Thanks for your comments. Now a bit clearer why the releases are not
available. But it is quite strange: there is eCosCentric but no
releases. Normally the commercial companies that are at the back of the
open-source project, do this job. Check RTEMS for example. 

........
> If you don't want to hear answers, then don't ask questions.

Irrelevant note. Not all the phrases are to be understood directly.
There are idioms in each language. That was one of them. Don't take it
out of the context. In that context it meant: "I don't think so" if you
wish

........
> Utter bullshit.  They do have bugs, but so do releases. Neither
> is "supposed to have bugs".

My mistake, I meant to say "expected to have bugs". Here is the standard
note from a standard open-source project CVS tree: "...the CVS code is
always moving in features and stability. While very attempt is made to
keep the CVS head working on all targets, but there are no any
guarantees". 

.......
> Bah. Nobody intentionally checks in bugs.

Depends. In the area of safety-critical systems, it is a standard
debugging methodology: you intentionally introduce bugs in the systems
to see how it can recover itself . 

... ...
> There are no "stable releases" of Linux any more.  Active
> development is being done in the "stable" tree.  There are no
> more stable and development versions of Linux like there used
> to be.

Linux itself - yes. But not its distros. The new releases are normally
produced every 3-6 months.

... ...
> On the contrary, we are all from the world of commercial
> products development.  That's what eCos is used for: developing
> commercial products.  I've been using eCos to develop
> commercial products for 7+ years, and the lack of "releases"
> hasn't been even the least bit of a problem.

That is your personal experience and your personal area of expertise in
particular commercial product area. Products that are expected to have
high reliability standards are rarely developed from CVS software
snapshots.

> If you feel you're not capable of working from a CVS repository
> and really want a "released" version, then that's what eCosPro
> is: http://www.ecoscentric.com/ecos/ecospro.shtml

Thanks. I have already checked it. Definitely, if we stick to eCos we
will buy the support from eCosCentric.

> Perhaps one of those RTOSes will meet your privilege management
> requirement better than eCos.

Unfortunately, they are either too expensive (the royalty fees would
cost us thousand or even millions of dollars) and most of them normally
don't provide source code. If they do provide it, then it costs another
hundreds of thousands.

By the way, do you now any more-or-less free RTOS that provides support
for privilege levels and process protection?

Thanks.

Best,
Alex

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RE: [ECOS] Re: Is eCos project still alive?

[Loginov Alexander]

.........
> Because that's the last time somebody paid developers to do the
> work involved in a public "release".

Thanks for your comments. Now a bit clearer why the releases are not
available. But it is quite strange: there is eCosCentric but no
releases. Normally the commercial companies that are at the back of the
open-source project, do this job. Check RTEMS for example. 

........
> If you don't want to hear answers, then don't ask questions.

Irrelevant note. Not all the phrases are to be understood directly.
There are idioms in each language. That was one of them. Don't take it
out of the context. In that context it meant: "I don't think so" if you
wish

........
> Utter bullshit.  They do have bugs, but so do releases. Neither
> is "supposed to have bugs".

My mistake, I meant to say "expected to have bugs". Here is the standard
note from a standard open-source project CVS tree: "...the CVS code is
always moving in features and stability. While very attempt is made to
keep the CVS head working on all targets, but there are no any
guarantees". 

.......
> Bah. Nobody intentionally checks in bugs.

Depends. In the area of safety-critical systems, it is a standard
debugging methodology: you intentionally introduce bugs in the systems
to see how it can recover itself . 

... ...
> There are no "stable releases" of Linux any more.  Active
> development is being done in the "stable" tree.  There are no
> more stable and development versions of Linux like there used
> to be.

Linux itself - yes. But not its distros. The new releases are normally
produced every 3-6 months.

... ...
> On the contrary, we are all from the world of commercial
> products development.  That's what eCos is used for: developing
> commercial products.  I've been using eCos to develop
> commercial products for 7+ years, and the lack of "releases"
> hasn't been even the least bit of a problem.

That is your personal experience and your personal area of expertise in
particular commercial product area. Products that are expected to have
high reliability standards are rarely developed from CVS software
snapshots.

> If you feel you're not capable of working from a CVS repository
> and really want a "released" version, then that's what eCosPro
> is: http://www.ecoscentric.com/ecos/ecospro.shtml

Thanks. I have already checked it. Definitely, if we stick to eCos we
will buy the support from eCosCentric.

> Perhaps one of those RTOSes will meet your privilege management
> requirement better than eCos.

Unfortunately, they are either too expensive (the royalty fees would
cost us thousand or even millions of dollars) and most of them normally
don't provide source code. If they do provide it, then it costs another
hundreds of thousands.

By the way, do you now any more-or-less free RTOS that provides support
for privilege levels and process protection?

Thanks.

Best,
Alex

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[ECOS] Re: Is eCos project still alive?

[Grant Edwards]

On 2007-12-13, Loginov Alexander <aloginov@asmpt.com> wrote:

> .........
>> Because that's the last time somebody paid developers to do the
>> work involved in a public "release".
>
> Thanks for your comments. Now a bit clearer why the releases
> are not available. But it is quite strange: there is
> eCosCentric but no releases.

There are releases.  That's what eCosPro is.

> Normally the commercial companies that are at the back of the
> open-source project, do this job. Check RTEMS for example. 

No thanks, I'm not going to check RTEMS.

> ........
>> If you don't want to hear answers, then don't ask questions.
>
> Irrelevant note. Not all the phrases are to be understood
> directly. There are idioms in each language. That was one of
> them. Don't take it out of the context. In that context it
> meant: "I don't think so" if you wish
>
> ........
>> Utter bullshit.  They do have bugs, but so do releases. Neither
>> is "supposed to have bugs".
>
> My mistake, I meant to say "expected to have bugs". Here is
> the standard note from a standard open-source project CVS
> tree: "...the CVS code is always moving in features and
> stability. While very attempt is made to keep the CVS head
> working on all targets, but there are no any guarantees". 

I wasn't aware that there was a standard for open-source
projects.

> .......
>> Bah. Nobody intentionally checks in bugs.
>
> Depends. In the area of safety-critical systems, it is a
> standard debugging methodology: you intentionally introduce
> bugs in the systems to see how it can recover itself . 

You don't check them into CVS.

> ... ...
>> There are no "stable releases" of Linux any more.  Active
>> development is being done in the "stable" tree.  There are no
>> more stable and development versions of Linux like there used
>> to be.
>
> Linux itself - yes. But not its distros. The new releases are normally
> produced every 3-6 months.

If you want a stable release of eCos then use eCosPro and stop
whinging at us.

> ... ...
>> On the contrary, we are all from the world of commercial
>> products development.  That's what eCos is used for: developing
>> commercial products.  I've been using eCos to develop
>> commercial products for 7+ years, and the lack of "releases"
>> hasn't been even the least bit of a problem.
>
> That is your personal experience and your personal area of
> expertise in particular commercial product area. Products that
> are expected to have high reliability standards are rarely
> developed from CVS software snapshots.

Products that have high reliability standards do their own
testing and "releasing".  They don't depend on the "releases"
of open-source packages to be bug-free.

>> If you feel you're not capable of working from a CVS repository
>> and really want a "released" version, then that's what eCosPro
>> is: http://www.ecoscentric.com/ecos/ecospro.shtml
>
> Thanks. I have already checked it. Definitely, if we stick to eCos we
> will buy the support from eCosCentric.

I'm glad to hear it.

>> Perhaps one of those RTOSes will meet your privilege
>> management requirement better than eCos.
>
> Unfortunately, they are either too expensive (the royalty fees
> would cost us thousand or even millions of dollars) and most
> of them normally don't provide source code. If they do provide
> it, then it costs another hundreds of thousands.

Releases cost money.

> By the way, do you now any more-or-less free RTOS that
> provides support for privilege levels and process protection?

Nope, I can't afford the dollars or watts for processors that
have those sorts of features.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  I'm a fuschia bowling
                                  at               ball somewhere in Brittany
                               visi.com            


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RE: [ECOS] Re: Is eCos project still alive?

[Chris Zimman]

Hi Alex,

I'm sorry for the rather caustic response you've received from this mailing
list.
 
If you are interested in eCos for your application, it sounds as though your
best bet would be to get a dialogue going with eCosCentric.  I'm not
personally aware of it being used in safety critical applications, although I
don't see any inherent reason that it couldn't (possibly with some work) get
that certification.

At this time, there isn't really a formalized release process for the CVS
version of eCos.  You will get this from eCosCentric though.  They provide
tested and supported releases.  This is a service that you pay for though.  I
would expect that it will be difficult to find an open source OS that's fully
supported and tested for little to no money as the developers need to earn a
living.

Not all of the commercial RTOS's have their source as unavailable or have
heinous license fees (Nucleus for example).  By nature, most have to provide
some level of source to support a wide variety of platforms.  The fees for
commercial RTOS licensing aren't typically that terrible, especially if the
volumes are high.

It would be nice to have check pointed releases of eCos, but without
volunteers to do the testing, etc. it would be rather difficult.  The
community is much smaller in comparison to the Linux kernel.

--Chris

-----Original Message-----
From: ecos-discuss-owner@ecos.sourceware.org
[mailto:ecos-discuss-owner@ecos.sourceware.org] On Behalf Of Grant Edwards
Sent: 13 December 2007 14:33
To: ecos-discuss@sources.redhat.com
Subject: [ECOS] Re: Is eCos project still alive?

On 2007-12-13, Loginov Alexander <aloginov@asmpt.com> wrote:

> .........
>> Because that's the last time somebody paid developers to do the
>> work involved in a public "release".
>
> Thanks for your comments. Now a bit clearer why the releases
> are not available. But it is quite strange: there is
> eCosCentric but no releases.

There are releases.  That's what eCosPro is.

> Normally the commercial companies that are at the back of the
> open-source project, do this job. Check RTEMS for example. 

No thanks, I'm not going to check RTEMS.

> ........
>> If you don't want to hear answers, then don't ask questions.
>
> Irrelevant note. Not all the phrases are to be understood
> directly. There are idioms in each language. That was one of
> them. Don't take it out of the context. In that context it
> meant: "I don't think so" if you wish
>
> ........
>> Utter bullshit.  They do have bugs, but so do releases. Neither
>> is "supposed to have bugs".
>
> My mistake, I meant to say "expected to have bugs". Here is
> the standard note from a standard open-source project CVS
> tree: "...the CVS code is always moving in features and
> stability. While very attempt is made to keep the CVS head
> working on all targets, but there are no any guarantees". 

I wasn't aware that there was a standard for open-source
projects.

> .......
>> Bah. Nobody intentionally checks in bugs.
>
> Depends. In the area of safety-critical systems, it is a
> standard debugging methodology: you intentionally introduce
> bugs in the systems to see how it can recover itself . 

You don't check them into CVS.

> ... ...
>> There are no "stable releases" of Linux any more.  Active
>> development is being done in the "stable" tree.  There are no
>> more stable and development versions of Linux like there used
>> to be.
>
> Linux itself - yes. But not its distros. The new releases are normally
> produced every 3-6 months.

If you want a stable release of eCos then use eCosPro and stop
whinging at us.

> ... ...
>> On the contrary, we are all from the world of commercial
>> products development.  That's what eCos is used for: developing
>> commercial products.  I've been using eCos to develop
>> commercial products for 7+ years, and the lack of "releases"
>> hasn't been even the least bit of a problem.
>
> That is your personal experience and your personal area of
> expertise in particular commercial product area. Products that
> are expected to have high reliability standards are rarely
> developed from CVS software snapshots.

Products that have high reliability standards do their own
testing and "releasing".  They don't depend on the "releases"
of open-source packages to be bug-free.

>> If you feel you're not capable of working from a CVS repository
>> and really want a "released" version, then that's what eCosPro
>> is: http://www.ecoscentric.com/ecos/ecospro.shtml
>
> Thanks. I have already checked it. Definitely, if we stick to eCos we
> will buy the support from eCosCentric.

I'm glad to hear it.

>> Perhaps one of those RTOSes will meet your privilege
>> management requirement better than eCos.
>
> Unfortunately, they are either too expensive (the royalty fees
> would cost us thousand or even millions of dollars) and most
> of them normally don't provide source code. If they do provide
> it, then it costs another hundreds of thousands.

Releases cost money.

> By the way, do you now any more-or-less free RTOS that
> provides support for privilege levels and process protection?

Nope, I can't afford the dollars or watts for processors that
have those sorts of features.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  I'm a fuschia
bowling
                                  at               ball somewhere in Brittany
                               visi.com            


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[ECOS] Re: Is eCos project still alive?

[Grant Edwards]

On 2007-12-13, Chris Zimman <czimman@bloomberg.com> wrote:

> I'm sorry for the rather caustic response you've received from
> this mailing list.

The man suggested that we intentionally put bugs into the eCos
CVS tree.  That's just plain insulting.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow! Where's the Coke
                                  at               machine?  Tell me a joke!!
                               visi.com            


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Re: [ECOS] Re: Is eCos project still alive?

[Mike Arthur]

> Thanks for your comments. Now a bit clearer why the releases are not
> available. But it is quite strange: there is eCosCentric but no
> releases. Normally the commercial companies that are at the back of the
> open-source project, do this job. Check RTEMS for example.

eCosCentric does contribute to the public CVS repository.  They keep
all of their releases internal to their branched version of eCos,
eCosPro.  The commercial arm of RTEMS (OAR Corporation) has not
branched from RTEMS, so all of their contributions and releases are
within the public tree.


> By the way, do you now any more-or-less free RTOS that provides support
> for privilege levels and process protection?
>

I believe there was some talk on the RTEMS mailing list about getting
something similar to VxWorks' RTPs going within RTEMS.  I don't know
if this ever came to fruition.

Hope this helps,
Mike

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Re: [ECOS] Re: Is eCos project still alive?

[Bob Koninckx]

On Thu, 2007-12-13 at 15:32 +0000, Grant Edwards wrote:
> On 2007-12-13, Chris Zimman <czimman@bloomberg.com> wrote:
> 
> > I'm sorry for the rather caustic response you've received from
> > this mailing list.
> 
> The man suggested that we intentionally put bugs into the eCos
> CVS tree.  That's just plain insulting.
> 

Wow, I usually don't engage in flame wars, but after some of these
reactions ... Anyway, I contributed a lot to eCos in the past (agreed,
certainly not as much as Grant) and did not feel offended in any way.
OTOH, some of the reactions to some honest question were, IMHO, plain
insulting without any a reason. If this is the way the eCos community
welcomes newcomers nowadays, I don't think the community will grow much
in the near future. There is always the option of just not reacting if
you read something you don like (which is exactly what I am going to do
from now on :-).

Bob


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[ECOS] Re: Is eCos project still alive?

[Grant Edwards]

On 2007-12-13, Bob Koninckx <bob.koninckx@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 2007-12-13 at 15:32 +0000, Grant Edwards wrote:
>> On 2007-12-13, Chris Zimman <czimman@bloomberg.com> wrote:
>> 
>> > I'm sorry for the rather caustic response you've received from
>> > this mailing list.
>> 
>> The man suggested that we intentionally put bugs into the eCos
>> CVS tree.  That's just plain insulting.
>
> Wow, I usually don't engage in flame wars, but after some of
> these reactions ... Anyway, I contributed a lot to eCos in the
> past (agreed, certainly not as much as Grant) and did not feel
> offended in any way.

Perhaps I overreacted, but I find it pretty irritating when
people who've obviosly put zero effort into investigating the
project (let alone contributing anything) show up out of the
blue demanding to know why an open-source project isn't being
run the way they want it to be run.  Then when it's explained
why things are run the way they are they start making claims
that what we're doing isn't good enough and we're not
professionals and have no experience with commercial product
development.

I probably should have just ignored him...

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow! Send your questions to
                                  at               ``ASK ZIPPY'', Box 40474,
                               visi.com            San Francisco, CA 94140,
                                                   USA


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Re: [ECOS] Re: Is eCos project still alive?

[Frank Pagliughi]

As a embedded-systems consultant, I've been using eCos for several 
years, and I love it.  I've used it for my own development - test apps 
and demos - but I have never been able to sell a single customer on 
using the OS for a project.  When a potential customer (usually a 
manager type) has a look, those things do stand out: it *looks* old and 
out of date, on first pass. Most don't seem to get past poking around 
the web page.

For more technically sophisticated customers, when 2.0 first appeared, 
it literally took ten minutes to download the code, and get a sample app 
running on an old PC. Now when I tell a customer to take it for a test 
drive, the setup gets involved, with pieces from several places.

I try to tell them to look closer, but by that time, they've already 
chosen something else. From my experience, the current state of the 
project doesn't seem to help sell it.

Frank

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RE: [ECOS] Re: Is eCos project still alive?

[Chris Zimman]

Frank,

I think you raise a valid point here.  Perhaps it would be time to consider
creating a more up to date release.
Rather frequently on the list, someone will say something to the effect of
'I've downloaded/am using eCos 2.0 ...blah blah...it seems very out of
date...'  The traditional response has been 'Go pull the latest from CVS'.

Thoughts anyone?

--Chris

-----Original Message-----
From: ecos-discuss-owner@ecos.sourceware.org
[mailto:ecos-discuss-owner@ecos.sourceware.org] On Behalf Of Frank Pagliughi
Sent: 13 December 2007 20:06
Cc: ecos-discuss@sources.redhat.com
Subject: Re: [ECOS] Re: Is eCos project still alive?

As a embedded-systems consultant, I've been using eCos for several 
years, and I love it.  I've used it for my own development - test apps 
and demos - but I have never been able to sell a single customer on 
using the OS for a project.  When a potential customer (usually a 
manager type) has a look, those things do stand out: it *looks* old and 
out of date, on first pass. Most don't seem to get past poking around 
the web page.

For more technically sophisticated customers, when 2.0 first appeared, 
it literally took ten minutes to download the code, and get a sample app 
running on an old PC. Now when I tell a customer to take it for a test 
drive, the setup gets involved, with pieces from several places.

I try to tell them to look closer, but by that time, they've already 
chosen something else. From my experience, the current state of the 
project doesn't seem to help sell it.

Frank

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Re: [ECOS] Re: Is eCos project still alive?

[Andrew Lunn]

On Fri, Dec 14, 2007 at 05:38:02AM -0500, Chris Zimman wrote:
> Frank,
> 
> I think you raise a valid point here.  Perhaps it would be time to consider
> creating a more up to date release.
> Rather frequently on the list, someone will say something to the effect of
> 'I've downloaded/am using eCos 2.0 ...blah blah...it seems very out of
> date...'  The traditional response has been 'Go pull the latest from CVS'.
> 
> Thoughts anyone?

It has been for a long time the aim to make a release once the
copyright transfer to FSF is completed. This has take much much longer
than we ever thought it would take. We are nearly there, there is just
one copyright assignment left, which is taking a while to sort out.

Once this is completed we will start the work needed for a
release. This is not something we can do overnight. It involves a lot
of work. Nearly ever file needs to be touched in order to change the
copyright notices. We probably need new tool chains, want to merge in
the v2 flash branch, maybe pick up some patches which got dropped
along the way etc. We need to do a lot of testing....

      Andrew

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RE: [ECOS] Re: Is eCos project still alive?

[Paul D. DeRocco]

> From: Andrew Lunn
> 
> It has been for a long time the aim to make a release once 
> the copyright transfer to FSF is completed. This has take 
> much much longer than we ever thought it would take. We are 
> nearly there, there is just one copyright assignment left, 
> which is taking a while to sort out.
> 
> Once this is completed we will start the work needed for a 
> release. This is not something we can do overnight. It 
> involves a lot of work. Nearly ever file needs to be touched 
> in order to change the copyright notices. We probably need 
> new tool chains, want to merge in the v2 flash branch, maybe 
> pick up some patches which got dropped along the way etc. We 
> need to do a lot of testing....

The problem that led to this thread is that there is no mention on any of
the web pages of anything other than 2.0, even though in reality the CVS has
hundreds of subsequent revisions of individual files in it. You don't get to
see that unless you download the code and look at when the individual files
were checked in. It's understandable that people would be unaware at first
that the CVS doesn't simply contain "version 2.0". If the CVS could spit out
an automated revision history, perhaps consisting of a separate web page for
each month, and that had a link to it on the home page, people might not get
this misimpression.

-- 

Ciao,               Paul D. DeRocco
Paul                mailto:pderocco@ix.netcom.com 


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Re: [ECOS] Re: Is eCos project still alive?

[Ilija Koco]

> By the way, do you now any more-or-less free RTOS that provides support
> for privilege levels and process protection?
>   
This may be solution for you. http://www.rtai.org/

Regards
Ilija

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[ECOS] FSF copyright assignmnett. [Was Re: [ECOS] Re: Is eCos project still alive?]

[Ilija Koco]

Andrew Lunn wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 14, 2007 at 05:38:02AM -0500, Chris Zimman wrote:
>   
>> Frank,
>>
>> I think you raise a valid point here.  Perhaps it would be time to consider
>> creating a more up to date release.
>> Rather frequently on the list, someone will say something to the effect of
>> 'I've downloaded/am using eCos 2.0 ...blah blah...it seems very out of
>> date...'  The traditional response has been 'Go pull the latest from CVS'.
>>
>> Thoughts anyone?
>>     
>
> It has been for a long time the aim to make a release once the
> copyright transfer to FSF is completed. This has take much much longer
> than we ever thought it would take. We are nearly there, there is just
> one copyright assignment left, which is taking a while to sort out.
>
> Once this is completed we will start the work needed for a
> release. This is not something we can do overnight. It involves a lot
> of work. Nearly ever file needs to be touched in order to change the
> copyright notices. We probably need new tool chains, want to merge in
> the v2 flash branch, maybe pick up some patches which got dropped
> along the way etc. We need to do a lot of testing....
>
>       Andrew
>   
And yet there isn't any note of this event. I am apologize for changing
the subject, but I don't recall of any announcement on mailing list and
surely there isn't any news at ecos.sourceware.org. I got an official
(snail mail) letter from eCosCentric about my assignment being
transfered to FSF and that's all.

Best regards
Ilija



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Re: [ECOS] FSF copyright assignment. [Was Re: [ECOS] Re: Is eCos project still alive?]

[Daniel Morris]

On Fri, Dec 14, 2007 at 01:00:02PM +0100, Ilija Koco wrote:
> Andrew Lunn wrote:
> > On Fri, Dec 14, 2007 at 05:38:02AM -0500, Chris Zimman wrote:
> >   
> >> Frank,
> >>
> >> I think you raise a valid point here.  Perhaps it would be time to consider
> >> creating a more up to date release.
> >> Rather frequently on the list, someone will say something to the effect of
> >> 'I've downloaded/am using eCos 2.0 ...blah blah...it seems very out of
> >> date...'  The traditional response has been 'Go pull the latest from CVS'.
> >>
> >> Thoughts anyone?
> >>     
> >
> > It has been for a long time the aim to make a release once the
> > copyright transfer to FSF is completed. This has take much much longer
> > than we ever thought it would take. We are nearly there, there is just
> > one copyright assignment left, which is taking a while to sort out.
> >
> > Once this is completed we will start the work needed for a
> > release. This is not something we can do overnight. It involves a lot
> > of work. Nearly ever file needs to be touched in order to change the
> > copyright notices. We probably need new tool chains, want to merge in
> > the v2 flash branch, maybe pick up some patches which got dropped
> > along the way etc. We need to do a lot of testing....
> >
> >       Andrew
> >   
> And yet there isn't any note of this event. I am apologize for changing
> the subject, but I don't recall of any announcement on mailing list and
> surely there isn't any news at ecos.sourceware.org. I got an official
> (snail mail) letter from eCosCentric about my assignment being
> transfered to FSF and that's all.
> 

As Andrew said above it is still not complete, despite the hundreds of
hours spent on trying to complete this process - my apologies for
under-estimating the time already spent on this, as I only have direct
visibility of eCosCentric time that has gone into it.

Pre-announcing, giving a blow-by-blow report of who's not responding &
for how long etc. would just add to the frustration and build a platform
for further whining, whinging and unproductive gossip. As you've seen,
mostly people try to rise above the level of responding to trolls,
ill-considered views, non-existent smoking-guns, cheap shots and
unreasonable criticism ;-)


In other news, eCosCentric secured the rights to the eCos trademark
earlier in the year in order to protect the mark, its usage and to
ensure that the community would be able to use it. We wouldn't have done
that if we weren't planning for the continued growth of eCos...

 Daniel


%<----------------------------------------------------------------------
  Daniel Morris - Sales & Marketing Director
  eCosCentric - The eCos and RedBoot experts
  Tel: +44 1223 245 571 - info@eCosCentric.com
  DDI: +44 1269 591 171 - danielm@eCosCentric.com

  eCosCentric Limited is a company registered in England and Wales with 
  company number 4422071, VAT number GB 811 6278 42, registered address
  Barnwell House, Barnwell Drive, Cambridge CB5 8UU, UK. 

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Re: [ECOS] Re: Is eCos project still alive?

[Brian Austin]

I can see that, but as for what we use ( RedBoot ).  customers love it.

From my experiences, if it does what it's supposed to do, who cares how
old it is.  How many folks use X11?



On Thu, 2007-12-13 at 15:06 -0500, Frank Pagliughi wrote:
> As a embedded-systems consultant, I've been using eCos for several 
> years, and I love it.  I've used it for my own development - test apps 
> and demos - but I have never been able to sell a single customer on 
> using the OS for a project.  When a potential customer (usually a 
> manager type) has a look, those things do stand out: it *looks* old and 
> out of date, on first pass. Most don't seem to get past poking around 
> the web page.
> 
> For more technically sophisticated customers, when 2.0 first appeared, 
> it literally took ten minutes to download the code, and get a sample app 
> running on an old PC. Now when I tell a customer to take it for a test 
> drive, the setup gets involved, with pieces from several places.
> 
> I try to tell them to look closer, but by that time, they've already 
> chosen something else. From my experience, the current state of the 
> project doesn't seem to help sell it.
> 
> Frank
> 



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[ECOS] Re: Is eCos project still alive?

[Sergei Organov]

Brian Austin <brian.austin@cirrus.com> writes:

> I can see that, but as for what we use ( RedBoot ).  customers love it.
>
>From my experiences, if it does what it's supposed to do, who cares how
> old it is.  How many folks use X11?

Well, from xorg site:

"The last release of X.Org was 7.3, on September 6, 2007".

-- less than 4 months ago ;)

I think we must admit that situation with eCos releases is rather unique
among alive open-source projects and therefore it can lead to the wrong
conclusion that the project is either dead or stagnating.

-- 
Sergei.

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[ECOS] Re: Is eCos project still alive?

[Grant Edwards]

On 2007-12-14, Andrew Lunn <andrew@lunn.ch> wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 14, 2007 at 05:38:02AM -0500, Chris Zimman wrote:
>> Frank,
>> 
>> I think you raise a valid point here.  Perhaps it would be time to consider
>> creating a more up to date release.
>> Rather frequently on the list, someone will say something to the effect of
>> 'I've downloaded/am using eCos 2.0 ...blah blah...it seems very out of
>> date...'  The traditional response has been 'Go pull the latest from CVS'.
>> 
>> Thoughts anyone?
>
> It has been for a long time the aim to make a release once the
> copyright transfer to FSF is completed. This has take much
> much longer than we ever thought it would take. We are nearly
> there, there is just one copyright assignment left, which is
> taking a while to sort out.
>
> Once this is completed we will start the work needed for a
> release. This is not something we can do overnight. It
> involves a lot of work. Nearly ever file needs to be touched
> in order to change the copyright notices. We probably need new
> tool chains, want to merge in the v2 flash branch, maybe pick
> up some patches which got dropped along the way etc. We need
> to do a lot of testing....

If there's anything that can be done by soembody with a few
hours a week to spare, let us know.

As far as testing goes, my opinion is that a "release" doesn't
have to be guaranteed 100% bug free.  It would just need to
mean that there aren't any known incomatibilities beetween
major packages.  I think what we need more than anything is
just some snaphosts that can be used as reference points when
discussing or documenting things.  It's OK if release XYZ has
some bugs.  The important thing is to be able to say "I'm
running release XYZ with these patches" and have that mean
something.

I know one can accomplish the same thing by using a CVS
snapshot for a particular date/time, but without common
reference points in the development history, it's difficult to
even discuss some things.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow! I'm gliding over a
                                  at               NUCLEAR WASTE DUMP near
                               visi.com            ATLANTA, Georgia!!


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Re: [ECOS] Re: Is eCos project still alive?

[Brian Austin]

What does the ecos group wish to accomplish by making releases?

If it causes people to not use it, then I guess I "release" with a more
recent date could help that cause, but other than that, I see nothing
wrong with just pulling the tips _if_ you need new code.

I have not had people ask me for an official release though.  As long as
it does what it's supposed to, they dont seem to mind.


my 2 cents.

Brian


On Fri, 2007-12-14 at 16:33 +0000, Grant Edwards wrote:
> On 2007-12-14, Andrew Lunn <andrew@lunn.ch> wrote:
> > On Fri, Dec 14, 2007 at 05:38:02AM -0500, Chris Zimman wrote:
> >> Frank,
> >> 
> >> I think you raise a valid point here.  Perhaps it would be time to consider
> >> creating a more up to date release.
> >> Rather frequently on the list, someone will say something to the effect of
> >> 'I've downloaded/am using eCos 2.0 ...blah blah...it seems very out of
> >> date...'  The traditional response has been 'Go pull the latest from CVS'.
> >> 
> >> Thoughts anyone?
> >
> > It has been for a long time the aim to make a release once the
> > copyright transfer to FSF is completed. This has take much
> > much longer than we ever thought it would take. We are nearly
> > there, there is just one copyright assignment left, which is
> > taking a while to sort out.
> >
> > Once this is completed we will start the work needed for a
> > release. This is not something we can do overnight. It
> > involves a lot of work. Nearly ever file needs to be touched
> > in order to change the copyright notices. We probably need new
> > tool chains, want to merge in the v2 flash branch, maybe pick
> > up some patches which got dropped along the way etc. We need
> > to do a lot of testing....
> 
> If there's anything that can be done by soembody with a few
> hours a week to spare, let us know.
> 
> As far as testing goes, my opinion is that a "release" doesn't
> have to be guaranteed 100% bug free.  It would just need to
> mean that there aren't any known incomatibilities beetween
> major packages.  I think what we need more than anything is
> just some snaphosts that can be used as reference points when
> discussing or documenting things.  It's OK if release XYZ has
> some bugs.  The important thing is to be able to say "I'm
> running release XYZ with these patches" and have that mean
> something.
> 
> I know one can accomplish the same thing by using a CVS
> snapshot for a particular date/time, but without common
> reference points in the development history, it's difficult to
> even discuss some things.
> 
> -- 
> Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow! I'm gliding over a
>                                   at               NUCLEAR WASTE DUMP near
>                                visi.com            ATLANTA, Georgia!!
> 
> 



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[ECOS] Re: Is eCos project still alive?

[Grant Edwards]

On 2007-12-14, Brian Austin <brian.austin@cirrus.com> wrote:

>> From my experiences, if it does what it's supposed to do, who
>> cares how old it is.  How many folks use X11?

X11 is not "old" in the sense that we're discussing.  X11 has
very regular releases (about twice a year).  The most recent
release was X11R7.3 that came out in September of 2007.  R7.4
is expected to be out in Feb 08.  The last release of eCos was
so long ago that it's not even mentioned on the "news" page at
http://ecos.sourceware.org/ that only goes back 4 years.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow! Remember, in 2039,
                                  at               MOUSSE & PASTA will
                               visi.com            be available ONLY by
                                                   prescription!!


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Re: [ECOS] Re: Is eCos project still alive?

[Jonathan Larmour]

Andrew Lunn wrote:
> 
> Once this is completed we will start the work needed for a
> release. This is not something we can do overnight. It involves a lot
> of work. Nearly ever file needs to be touched in order to change the
> copyright notices. We probably need new tool chains,

Hopefully not "need".

> want to merge in
> the v2 flash branch, maybe pick up some patches which got dropped
> along the way etc. We need to do a lot of testing....

Andrew's spot on, and eCosCentric will be involved in that. This has been
planned for a loong time, and I put together a todo list many months ago,
but we've been stalled on the legal side for an inordinate time.

Replying to some other things in this thread, to make things clear,
eCosCentric are a company but it's never been our desire for eCosPro to
_replace_ stable eCos releases, but to augment and improve them. Now we
can't bring everything in eCos to the standard of eCosPro ;) (not least
because there are things that eCosPro has which eCos does not), but the
most important thing at the moment is to get a stable baseline for eCos and
consolidate the state of everything right now. In answer to what Grant
said, yes it will take time which effectively means money, but eCosCentric
is willing to dedicate decent time to this (assuming we're not tied up on
pre-existing contract work of course).

Will the next release be a major step forward from present anoncvs? Apart
from flashv2, probably not for existing anoncvs users, but it will be much
better for new eCos users. Big improvements shouldn't be aimed for releases
really - only bite off what you can chew!

Jifl
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------["Si fractum non sit, noli id reficere"]------       Opinions==mine

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