QNX 8 goes freeware – for non-commercial use
- Reference: 1731349810
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/11/11/qnx_8_freeware/
- Source link:
With a new outreach initiative it calls [1]QNX Everywhere , Canadian RTOS vendor Blackberry is trying to drum up more interest in its lightweight, microkernel-based, Unix-like real-time OS. There was already a free 30-day evaluation version, but now an unlimited edition is available – so long as it's for evaluation and non-commercial use. There's a [2]Raspberry Pi version , and the company is also offering demo source code [3]on GitLab .
QNX is venerable code now. It dates back to the 1980s, and it's probably the most proven genuine microkernel OS in the business. We stress genuine microkernel, because microkernels were very trendy in the late 20th century for a while and as a result everyone and their dog claimed their OSes were microkernels.
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Microsoft bruited it about the massively monolithic Windows NT kernel. Carnegie-Mellon's Mach broadly is, and alongside several long-dead proprietary OSes such as Tru64 and OSF/1, Mach lies deep underneath macOS – but that has a big in-kernel "Unix server" that rather nixes the "micro" part. The FOSS Minix version 3 definitely counts, but despite being shipped inside millions of Intel Core microprocessors' management engines, Minix 3 remains somewhat incomplete, and since [5]creator Andy Tanenbaum has retired, it looks likely to stay that way.
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This is not the first time that QNX's owners have made it free to use, though, and some battle-scarred industry veterans are a little wary, as the [8]Hacker News comments attest. It first came to many people's attention in 1997 when Amiga Inc [9]chose QNX as the basis of the next-gen Amiga.
That [10]didn't happen , but in 1999, QNX showed what it could do by releasing the amazing [11]single-floppy demo disk . Astonishingly even at the time, this fitted the OS, its GUI, a web browser, and a TCP/IP stack onto one bootable 1.4 MB floppy diskette. You can [12]see how it looked and still [13]get some extensions even now.
[14]After reportedly dragging its feet, BlackBerry admits, yes, QNX in cars, equipment suffers from BadAlloc bug
[15]BlackBerry and Baidu buddy up on autonomous autos
[16]BlackBerry's QNX to run autonomous car software
[17]BlackBerry-driven robo-car spins its RIMs across Canada
For a while it was one of several competing x86 Unix-like OSes, and it gradually picked up ports of many popular FOSS tools, even including Mozilla Firefox. The company was [18]acquired by Harman in 2004. A few years later, in 2007, it [19]published the source code of the OS, although it wasn't really open source. You could look, but not do anything much with it. A few years later, Blackberry maker RIM [20]acquired its Canadian neighbor and the source code was [21]quickly withdrawn again . (Copies, of course, can still [22]be found .) Former owner Harman was later [23]acquired by Samsung .
Still, this is an encouraging move. The embedded and real-time OS space has changed quite quickly in recent years, which has prompted some significant shifts. Around this time last year, [24]Microsoft open sourced its ThreadX RTOS , as used in the Raspberry Pi's firmware. As we noted when [25]version 6.11 of the kernel appeared , the real-time patches for a pre-emptive version of Linux itself were merged and should appear with kernel version 6.12 in the very near future.
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Although Linux is very big by RTOS standards, it's free, everyone knows it, and almost everyone supports it, which makes it a contender even against smaller, lighter, faster OSes – such as QNX. This may be a motivating factor for the Blackberry subsidiary to make efforts to attract fresh interest to its contender.
We've contacted the company and requested an evaluation license, so we hope to have a look at the latest version in the near future. ®
Get our [27]Tech Resources
[1] https://blackberry.qnx.com/en/products/qnx-everywhere
[2] https://gitlab.com/qnx/quick-start-images/raspberry-pi-qnx-8.0-quick-start-image
[3] https://gitlab.com/qnx
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZzKMlNJudNbAEDmQc2wjKgAAAA8&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/25/tanenbaum_minix_award/
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZzKMlNJudNbAEDmQc2wjKgAAAA8&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZzKMlNJudNbAEDmQc2wjKgAAAA8&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42079460
[9] http://www.bambi-amiga.co.uk/amigahistory/qnxanno.html
[10] https://www.theregister.com/1999/07/09/qnx_developer_pleas_for_amiga/
[11] https://winworldpc.com/product/qnx/144mb-demo
[12] http://toastytech.com/guis/qnxdemo.html
[13] http://qnx.puslapiai.lt/qnxdemo/qnx_demo_disk.htm
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/19/blackberry_qnxrtos_badalloc/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2018/01/09/baidu_and_blackberry_autonomous_autos/
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2017/09/21/delphi_automotive_picks_blackberry_qnx_for_autonomous_cars/
[17] https://www.theregister.com/2016/11/28/blackberry_robot_car/
[18] https://www.qnx.com/news/pr_1121_1.html
[19] https://www.qnx.com/news/pr_2471_1.html
[20] https://www.theregister.com/2010/04/14/rim_buys_qnx/
[21] https://www.theregister.com/2010/09/28/blackberry_tablet_runs_qnx/
[22] https://github.com/vocho/openqnx/
[23] https://www.qnx.com/news/pr_1121_1.html
[24] https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/28/microsoft_opens_sources_threadx/
[25] https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/28/microsoft_opens_sources_threadx/
[26] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZzKMlNJudNbAEDmQc2wjKgAAAA8&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[27] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Looks at the QNX page - buttons that look like buttons, you can easily see which is the selected window....
Why did we make OS design worse?
To create second revenue stream - courses and certifications.
Registration required
Requiring registration is going to kill a lot of casual developer interest right there. Too many people are going to see the need to talk to QNX about a non-commercial license as just being a tool for generating sales leads for QNX salesmen.
If I could just download an image that I could run in a VM or on a Raspberry Pi I might port some of my open source software libraries to it. If I have to jump through hoops, then why bother?
I would think that getting more people to use QNX would be in the company's interest. In terms of generating revenue it's easy for them to find who the big customers are who are shipping QNX in commercial products. It's not like they need to worry about per-CPU server licensing customers in corporate server rooms.
Re: Registration required
It's like you go down the street and pass through a strip club, look through the window and see QNX shaking its goods to the phonk beat, bouncer says: "your name and email address". You say "no thanks I am dislexic" and quickly go home to your Linux machine, open and close some apps to let off the steam.
Re: Registration required
Yes; please more of these similes.
Intriguing.
There are a number of non-microkernel RTOS' (VxWorks, FreeRTOS, etc) and these will be the chief competition as most software corps really don't understand what kernel architecture has to do with things.
Of the microkernel RTOS' out there, SEL4 is probably the most studied, out of necessity due to the requirement that it meet very high standards of proof of correctness.
There are others, but they seem to be mostly proprietary and niche.
And, of course, these days, Linux does soft realtime (now the final patches are in).
QNX, to compete, is going to have to have a very convincing selling point.
Clearly, the makers think they have one. I will be watching this with interest.
Re: Intriguing.
https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/automotive-operating-system-market-report
Flop
I still have QNX on a floppy somewhere.
That said, I don't see the point. You'll get some hobbyists installing it, clicking here and there and that's it.
No one serious is going to invest their time in this.
They should probably base it off certain revenue level or simply offer clear pricing that could be manageable from small to large business.