Next week, November 18th, we’ll be running a great webinar entitled “Tips and techniques for improving embedded Linux startup time”. I encourage you to attend because one of our greatest assets here, Christopher Hallinan, will be speaking with Sridharan Subramanian of Freescale, and providing an overview of the boot sequence and kernel optimizations to consider for improving boot up. Chris, as you may know is has authored the number one embedded Linux book out there: Embedded Linux Primer.

Register and learn something new!

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Amanda McPherson, Brian Proffitt and Ron Hale-Evans over at the Linux Foundation just released a new report on estimating the total value of the GNU and Linux software stack. If you’ve been around for a few years you’ve seen similar studies by David A. Wheeler and Bill Weinberg. All three of the studies use the COCOMO software costing model. COCOMO is an algorithm that uses some some algorithms to estimate the cost of a software codebase from the number of lines of code and the cost of the engineering team to write the code.

COCOMO spit out that Fedora 9 was a $10 billion dollar nugget of code.

Those out there with a more cynical mind will likely start complaining about the model, the cost of the engineer, the biases of the study authors, etc.

Let’s ignore all of that and just be brutally honest: There is zero financial incentive to create new competitive proprietary operating systems. The costs are too high because the barrier to compete is set very high by Linux. You won’t get rewarded by the market for writing a new block disk layer or scheduling algorithm under a proprietary license.

What does this mean for the embedded systems market? Lack of new competitive threats against the surviving proprietary operating systems. With few new competitive options the investment that might go into product improvement that could benefit the common user is withering. You can see it already… the real competitive front for many of these companies has shifted to milaero. They duke it out adding new features that 99% of embedded developers will never use.

So what to do? You’ve got to make your move and find a comfortable orbit around the world of GNU and Linux. That’s the innovation center. $10B is part of the proof of that. Next you need to find a way to get the most benefit from this new world of open source.

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I returned home to Atlanta on Saturday still pumped about the great learning and fun that we had that week at the Vision 2008 Embedded Linux Conference. I wanted to share with you a few of them.

I’m sure you saw the splash on the Dell Lattitude ON announcement. Many of my MV colleagues have been nose to the grindstone for months on this project. They were asked to be the systems software provider (using Mobilinux 5.0) and to do the software integration for the application stack. I’ve not seen much of it myself personally but I hear good reports. Hopefully this will be a great success for Dell.

Since I was working and presenting at the event I didn’t get to attend many of the sessions. I did attend one of the last sessions of the conference by Matt Porter of Embedded Alley. His topic was the new Unsorted Block Image (UBI) and the UBI Filesystem (UBIFS) that can be layered upon it. What was superb about Matt’s presentation was that it wasn’t just a summary of information you could have learned off of Google. Matt went beyond the basics and delved into how to model your application’s usage profile to predict how quickly your product will consume the flash lifecycle of modern multilayer NAND flash memories.

I’ll repost if we can get a video of Matt’s presentation up on the web.

The other big highlight of the event was the Thursday night “Streets of San Francisco” party. This was the brainchild of our events manager Pamela Sherwood and it turned out great. The hotel ballroom was converted into street scenes from San Francisco. Tucked in the nooks and crannies was the dinner for the evening and ample adult beverages. All of this led up to what I think was the highlight of the evening… the Rock Band 2 show. I’ve played Rock Band quite a lot but it is a different experience with a stage, lights, and a real sound system.

We’ve got all the videos up on YouTube.

That’s our European FAE team giving a spirited rendition of Girls on Film.

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Bootcamp!

The last few weeks at MontaVista have been quite hectic. Our Vision 2008 Embedded Linux Developer’s conference is finally here and getting everything prepared has been a huge effort for many of the MontaVista family. Now that the conference is in progress it is fun to see colleagues from around the world and meet embedded Linux enthusiasts from around the world. The photo above is from the “Bootcamp” training session being held right now. Most everyone has brought their laptops, loaded Linux in a virtualized environment, and are up and learning.

We’ve got two more days of the Vision conference and you haven’t missed out yet. If you are in the San Francisco area the get yourself to the registration page and use the promo code “BRAD”. You’ll get a discount that is steep enough you won’t mind having to upend your week to learn something very useful to your day job.

I’m having a great time at Vision… hope you can join us!

Brad

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I just got off the plane from a great week visiting HQ in Santa Clara, CA. It is always fun to spend some time with my colleagues out there. Read to the bottom if you’d like to save some money and get some geek training.

I can’t say enough how thankful I am for everyone attending last week’s multicore webinar. The turnout was great. I enjoyed doing it and I hope you found it valuable. We’ve got some great upcoming sessions that we’ll mention closer to the broadcast date.

When preparing the session I tried very hard to focus on technology and techniques rather than products. That might seem a little odd coming from someone in the vendor community but I’m enough of a geek that I get a little bored listening to someone drone on about their datasheet. Let me know if that was the right balance for you in the comments, please.

If you didn’t watch the session you can catch the recording.

On the flight home I was reviewing presentations for the Vision 2008 Embedded Linux Conference. There are some really great sessions planned. If you’ve not heard Paul McKenney, Jonathan Corbet, or Chris Hallinan speak I think you’ll be in for a treat. Paul’s presentation wins kudos for best cartooning. I’m also very interested in catching up with Deepak Saxena on the work he is doing at One Laptop Per Child. There are also some hands on training events that I’m hoping I can shoehorn myself into.

I took some time in the office to strong-arm our event planner, Pamela, into giving me a discount code for my loyal blog readers. I could have asked for some of her chocolate chip cookies instead… but I was thinking of you. If you would like to attend Vision 2008 you can get a serious discount. Just go to the registration page and enter the discount code BRAD on the payment page. The discount isn’t as good as the student rate of $130 but it is darn close.

I’ll buy a beer for any blog reader (who I don’t already know from work) who says hello and joins me onstage for a song when we play Rock Band 2 on Thursday night.

Brad

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Thank you to all of you who attended “Multicore 101: Migrating Embedded Applications to a Multicore Environment with Linux“. I am grateful to Ian Forsyth of Freescale as my co-presenter for the fruitful collaboration on this topic. Some quick reminders:

• Vision 2008: October 1-3, 2008 in San Francisco, California. This year’s top conference for embedded Linux developers will include a number of valuable technical presentations. Here are a few of them:

• Hands-on multicore Linux lab
• Linux synchronization mechanisms in driver development
• The Kernel Report by Jonathan Corbet of LWN.net
• Fast boot: Tips and techniques for improving Linux startup time
• Real time vs. real fast: How to choose? by Paul McKenney

Vision 2008 is sponsored in part by Freescale.

• Test Drive: If you’d like to take MontaVista Linux for a spin register for a free Test Drive session. You’ll be able to access a live system over the web including access to a Virtutech Simics powered hardware simulator.
• If you have more questions please enter your questions as a comment below. Ian and I will post all the answers we can get to.
• Subscribe to my blog for other posts from me concerning multicore, embedded Linux, security, the GPL and open source licensing and a little about MontaVista. Just click here for to subscribe via RSS.

Thank you again for your attendance and questions!

Brad Dixon

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It seems a little odd to say thank you in a public setting to a customer you can’t name but that’s the odd spot I find myself in.

Back in 2003 I was drafted as an emergency fill in for a colleague at an important meeting. I thought I was just doing a quick favor. In actuality the potential customer had about a hundred fairly complicated questions to discuss about Linux in the telecom environment. Answering their questions turned into an all day meeting. I was exhausted at the end of it.

After a brief pause I’ve been associated with this customer almost continually. I’ve worked closely with them on technical, business, and of course around requirements for new products. I can say confidently that this engineering team is one of the most professional that I’ve ever worked with. Even when they are under fire they work with each other and their partners with respect.

They are also incredibly competent. The nature of their applications and their customers demands the utmost accountability for failure and expertise at every level of abstraction. One technical issue literally had to be tracked down to a defect in an upgraded firmware load delivered in a new batch of hard drives. The systematic analysis skills and discipline required to kill that problem are not demonstrated widely.

I’m taking on a new set of responsibilities at MontaVista and as such I’m having to, after 5 years, back away a bit from my favorite customer. As I do so they should know that they have my respect and that I’m always a phone call or email away.

Thank you!

Brad

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It’s been a really busy week for me. Just put the wraps on a webinar that is premiering next week discussing multicore computing with Freescale. Ian Forsythe of Freescale will discuss the multicore challenge and their announced 8-core processor the P4080. I’ll follow up with a discussion of a strategy to migrate your application from single core to multicore.

Just a little taste of what will be in the session:

Linux’s inherent readiness for multicore

I hope you’ll attend. You can register for one of two timeslots:

• Thursday, September 11th 7 am ET /12 pm Western European Daylight

• Thursday, September 11th 10 am Pacific / 1 pm Eastern

Here’s the more official description:

When considering a move to a multicore environment, the number one
question embedded developers ask is “how do I leverage the work I’ve
already done in my applications?” Though multicore hardware has
provided improved performance for the embedded market, software
developers are challenged with taking advantage of the millions of
lines of single-threaded legacy code they have already written. This
creates a paradigm shift in how developers must think about and
implement future programs. This webinar will discuss the benefits of
embedded Linux as a solution with multicore and help systems engineers
consider what’s important as they make the transition. We will
conclude with an overview of MontaVista TestDrive, a virtual
evaluation of MontaVista Linux on a Virtutech Simics model of the
Freescale QorIQ P4080 and MPC8641D Power Architecture processors. We
invite attendees to sign-up for an evaluation of MontaVista software
on the latest Freescale multicore environments.

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The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) describes itself succinctly:

We provide legal representation and other law-related services to protect and advance Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). Founded in 2005, the Center now represents many of the most important and well-established free software and open source projects.

Have you heard of them? If not then maybe their actions are a little more familiar. The SFLC has been involved in GPL compliance actions and lawsuits against companies such as Supermicro, Extreme Networks, Bell Microproducts, and other notable companies. Most of the time these enforcement actions are centered on the busybox application since the SFLC represents the authors of busybox and this tool is commonly shipped with embedded devices.

My position on GPL compliance is simple: I want the company I work for to comply and the customers I work with to comply with all relevant software licenses both proprietary and open source. Compliance often is a natural outcome of having a well designed engineering process. Bradley M. Kuhn in his blog says that “…I’ve found myself repeating this advice on the phone, again and again, to another new GPL violator who screwed it all up, just like the last one did.” My limited observations mesh with his. I’ve see far more simple compliance issues caused by ignorance or oversight and zero complex violations caused by forethought and malice.

Of course… I’m not in the enforcement business. I’m just not looking with the same intent that the SFLC is. My role has mostly been educational.

The SFLC just published “A Practical Guide to GPL Compliance” by Kuhn, Williamson, and Sandler to their website. I’d consider this a “must read” for a few reasons:

• They offer what I consider to be some great advice on the practicalities of compliance. Simple edicts like making sure that you don’t have one “build guru” who holds the sole knowledge of how to assemble your product.
• They clearly have an understanding of the embedded software realm from both the technical and business perspective. Direct commentary on how to work with 3rd party contractors or ODM’s is included.
• The SFLC is also a likely opponent in a GPL compliance issue if it were to face your company. They want you to comply and do so without coercion. If one were to fail to comply then the SFLC might well knock on your door. Their advice on how they view compliance is enlightening and reading up on it could be considered a risk mitigation strategy.

I do have some criticisms of the document, however. My engineering perspective of the world has often caused frustration as I’ve learned about legal issues from experts like MontaVista’s Jason Wacha. I’ve always looked for a “license compliance compiler” that would crunch your code and tell you if you were in compliance with the applicable licenses. The truth of the matter is that no such tool will ever exist. Yes, I know about Black Duck and Palamida. These tools just correlate source code to the licenses conventionally associated with the code. Not the problem I’m concerned about here.

The reason that there will never be a “license compliance compiler” is that, at least in civil law in the US, much of it seems to be about risk. My engineer observations are that attorneys view the situation and then describe the risks of proposed decisions to management. The GPL does not provide complete and total guidance on all aspects of compliance. Much of the risk evaluation comes from the viewpoints and opinions of groups who have standing to sue… in this particular case the SFLC!

[Note that this lack of complete and total guidance for complying with the GPL isn’t a criticism of the GPL. Many (all?) contracts and licenses seem to be like this.]

My criticism is that there are some places where the SFLC’s compliance guide represents their opinion of necessary compliance steps as something grander. An example:

“We consider the name of the [proprietary] compiler [that can’t be shipped with source code], its exact version number, and where it can be acquired as information that must be provided as part of the Corresponding Source.” [emphasis theirs]

The “We” in this statement is the SFLC which represents the authors of various open source licensed code. The word “must” really means that it is SFLC’s strong opinion that one should provide this information. It is also my opinion that this is a common courtesy that is painless to implement. Why not provide this information?

My opinion on the matter, and SFLC’s as well, should be more clearly designated as just that: opinion. My last nuance on this before I end is that not all opinions are created equally. SFLC can enact a GPL compliance action against your company. I can’t. You should read this document and factor the advice it offers as both practical advice for complying with the GPL and for avoiding the ire of the friends of the open source communities at the SFLC.

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It has been a very interesting year looking out the window at the embedded Linux scene. I see total mainstream adoption as a clear and present trend. I base this off of “man-on-the-street” conversations with acquaintances. I was at a training conference on a non-technical topic. Asked what MontaVista did I gave my non-technical explanation. Quick as anything the person replies… “oh, embedded Linux. Yes, our engineers use that.”

Linux and the importance it has to technology product companies is now common awareness. That means something significant.

I’ve also seen a strong trend in recognition that the compelling problems of today are well outside the realm of just kernels, toolchains, and booting. The profound increase in potential software capability that open source brings to bear on new products has its one set of challenges. You can do media, office applications, advanced networking, wireless networking, power management, etc… but making choices and integration are far more challenging.

We’ve been able to help many of our clients to fabricate compelling products using a whole range of technologies north of the kernel. We’ll have some fun time discussing these in the coming months, I hope.

So since the action just starts at the kernel let’s take a moment to plug some upcoming conferences where you can explore these issues:

• Linux Plumbers Conference, September 17th-19th in Portland, OR: If you’ve ever been to the Ottawa Linux Symposium then I imagine this will be like that… just with a focus on all of the interfaces that bridge the kernel/userspace/application divide.
• MontaVista’s own Vision 2008 conference, October 1-3rd in San Francisco, CA: We had 400 attendees from 13 countries attend last year on this inaugural event. If you’re focus is on commercial product creation using Linux then this is a great even to network, learn, and brainstorm at.
• DESIGN & ELEKTRONIK Entwicklerforum, Oct 15, 2008 in Stuttgart: I had not heard of this conference before but there are a number of interesting presentations scheduled including two of from my fine colleague, Klaas van Gend and Ned Miljevic.
• Embedded Linux Conference Europe, November 6-7th in Ede, The Netherlands: One of the big dogs of the annual embedded Linux conferences. The Klaas & Ned show is making an appearance here as well.

So there you go… blow your annual travel budget out and make them all!

If you can only pick one then pick Vision 2008.

Brad

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