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Microsoft open-sources ThreadX

theregister.com

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Re: Microsoft open-sources ThreadX

#51

Post by phendrenad2 »

unnouinceput wrote: post #40

Quote: " Now, there is at least some hope that the Raspberry Pi Foundation might be able to get permission to release the source code for its version" This is something that always irked me about RPi's. How the fuck, you, the hardware vendor, that's suppose to know the inner guts of your product, do not have full production for its software? That you need it to rely on undisclosed 3rd party blobs!! Yes, yes, I know a…

Getting downvoted because nobody took the time to read your post, I assume. RPi foundation could probably have their own SoC made at this point, and (finally) having fully open firmware would be a huge selling point and maybe help stave off the clones. So why don't they do that?

Re: Microsoft open-sources ThreadX

#54

Post by demondemidi »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #43
demondemidi wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! There are some industries that will not tolerate seat-of-the-pants development. Functional safety requirements make a nice tall fence to keep out risky developers. Which is why china automakers have no such regulations.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but FuSa dev teams are often full of "risky developers" who frankly shouldn't be within mile of any codebase your life depends on. You can only hope the safety culture and tooling keeps them in check. There's genuinely good parts of the standards, but a lot of the rituals are just checklist items to assure certification authorities you have a defined process similar to what they've seen be…

Thanks for your insight! As someone who has lead FuSa certification on multiple automotive products, I can’t disagree with you more. But maybe you just had a bad experience.

Re: Microsoft open-sources ThreadX

#55

Post by Andrex »

joezydeco wrote: post #36
MegaDeKay wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Broadcom never opens up anything". True, but from a link in the related article from The Guardian [0] > Broadcom when they developed the original Videocore firmware bought a licence for ThreadX from the writer. AIUI, a lifetime licence, it never expires. No royalties or anything like that. Raspberry Pi have modified that firmware many many times over the last 10 years, but no royalties to pay. Many years later the w…

I believe it's wishful thinking. I wish all you RPi fans the best in your endeavor.

Maybe a clean room recreation is possible? Or are those straws even further out of grasp...

Re: Microsoft open-sources ThreadX

#56

Post by surajrmal »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #51
unnouinceput wrote: post #40

Quote: " Now, there is at least some hope that the Raspberry Pi Foundation might be able to get permission to release the source code for its version" This is something that always irked me about RPi's. How the fuck, you, the hardware vendor, that's suppose to know the inner guts of your product, do not have full production for its software? That you need it to rely on undisclosed 3rd party blobs!! Yes, yes, I know a…

Getting downvoted because nobody took the time to read your post, I assume. RPi foundation could probably have their own SoC made at this point, and (finally) having fully open firmware would be a huge selling point and maybe help stave off the clones. So why don't they do that?

They almost certainly cannot afford to do that at the prices they are selling these things for. I'm also not entirely certain a large enough fraction of their customer base cares enough for them to take action here. They are likely doing the practical thing that makes the most sense.

Re: Microsoft open-sources ThreadX

#57

Post by hashtag-til »

cinntaile wrote: post #45
joezydeco wrote: post #5

This was "Azure RTOS", bought by Microsoft in haste after Amazon acquired FreeRTOS. Bill Lamie left to start PX5 and work on a new lightweight embedded RTOS and took most of the talent with him. If Microsoft is doing this, they're pretty much walking away from their roadmap for Azure RTOS and IoT nodes along those lines. I call it a win, ThreadX had a lot more ecosystem behind it than FreeRTOS ever did. And it does r…

It's an acquisition from 2017 but do you happen to know why Amazon bought FreeRTOS?

I think it boils down to "because they can".

Re: Microsoft open-sources ThreadX

#58

Post by westurner »

SanjayMehta wrote: post #35
westurner wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But are there devs for the acquired platform now? The article says ThreadX used to be what Intel Management Engine ME ran on? How do I configure the ME / AMT VNC auth in there?

The IME ran on Minix. https://itsfoss.com/fact-intel-minix-case/

Intel Management Engine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine

Re: Microsoft open-sources ThreadX

#59

Post by amluto »

hospitalJail wrote: post #26
zwieback wrote: post #10

It's a fine RTOS, at least it was when I was working on Deskjet firmware. At the time the open source OSes and especially the tooling really wasn't up to the task. Things really have changed though, now there are alternatives.

The progress the embedded world has made on FOSS has been incredible. I started in like 2016 or 2017(ignoring the ~8 years I played with Arduino). At the end of the day, I end up often using microchip studio because that is my board and it just works nicely. However, I have tons of tiny personal projects I'll spin up with vscode and platformIO and knock stuff out. Heck, even when I was merely playing around with it,…

One of my first projects was an embedded thing, long before 2016, where the number of deployments was exactly one. (It was a ruggedized device embedded into an experiment that we literally dropped from an eight story building twice a day. The device in question did just fine, although, unsurprisingly, a bunch of the rest of the apparatus needed rather regular repairs.)

The development experience was miserable. The embedded code was in C, and, when something went wrong, there was about a 50% chance that the bug was in the proprietary compiler from the vendor and not in the C code at all.

There was probably some way to debug the live system, but I never found it. I’m not sure where was any way to simulate the system well enough to run our code short of actually uploading it to the device.

The world has come a long way :). An RPi or Arduino or anything else along those lines would likely also survive the treatment we gave this thing as long as all the connectors were very well secured.

Re: Microsoft open-sources ThreadX

#60

Post by Aurornis »

wiz21c wrote: post #19

Is it me or certification is a very powerful way to keep control on the open sourced code ? I mean it's open so you can modify it but as soon as you touch one line, you can't claim the certification anymore... Therefore only MSFT has the ability to change the code (because I suppose they don't have to re-do the whole certification); until another big player gets the certification. Right ?

> Therefore only MSFT has the ability to change the code (because I suppose they don't have to re-do the whole certification);

This is incorrect. Microsoft does not have free license to change the code and retain certification.

The certification is handled by a separate entity. The certification rules apply to contributions from everyone, including Microsoft.

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