September 14, 2007

QNX "Opens" Neutrino!

QNX Software Systems, leading provider of superior realtime operating system (RTOS) software and services for embedded design announced its move revolutionizes software development practices by combining the best of the open source and commercial software domains.

Neutrino, the realtime operating system from QNX will be open sourced under a new hybrid software licensing arrangement. Neutrino is ward-winning, microkernel-based OS released in 2001. Now, the source code will be available for non-commercial use and anybody can access it! According to press release the first source release includes the code to the QNX Neutrino microkernel, the base C library, and a variety of board support packages (BSPs) for popular embedded and computing hardware.

The new hybrid model will allow free access to code but, but commercial deployments of QNX Neutrino runtime components still require royalties, and commercial developers will continue to pay for QNX Momentics development seats. So, what is QNX targeting at? Is it that they want to open up just for innovation and improving Neutrino and sell it off through their commercial license? We have seen many company follow this type of hybrid software model to take advantage of open source developer community!

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