On 8/22/2012 6:05 AM, Byron Blue wrote:
We are considering moving our operating system to the Linux environment.
I am guessing that you have a proprietary operating system that you have
written, and you are considering moving further development of that
operating system to a Linux environment. Note that I say "a Linux," not
"the Linux." There are many, many Linux environments.
My first question is: What is wrong with your current development
environment? "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
I moved from the Apple environment to Linux (several distributions over
the years) in 1999. There is a significant learning curve. I am very
happy with my choice, but it cost me lots of time. Is your company
willing to pay for that time? What do you project they will get in
return for this investment?
In my case I was in higher education. I believe that our students
benefited from being able to work in an open-source environment. But
most of them come to the university knowing only Windows, so there is a
learning curve for them (which is the whole point of a university
education!). In a commercial environment learning curves cost money,
which may not be recovered.
As for licensing issues, I believe you should talk to an attorney who
specializes in such issues before making any changes. Your preliminary
research (as you are doing here) may save some attorney billing time,
but in a commercial venture, I would want the opinion of an attorney. I
cite the current Apple v Samsung v Apple cases as my evidence.
--Bob
Our product is a commercial OMNI sonar system used throughout the
world in the commercial fishing industry. The software itself and
upgrades are free of charge to the user.
Of course, my choice for the compiler would be GCC.
I should initially point out that I am unfamiliar with both Linux and
therefore GCC.
This is the question:
GCC uses the GNU license scheme. This operating system would be
embedding in our industrial computers and I do not (of course) want
the source code for our operating system to be open source - available
to our competitors. The GNU site is not quite clear in this area and
being new I would not want to "break the rules". Could I ask you for a
bit of clarification on this issue?
Thank you for your time and efforts,
Byron Blue
Software Engineering
MAQ Sonar
