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QNX is now free for anything non-commercial, plus there's an RPi image

blackberry.qnx.com

141–150 of 380 posts

Re: QNX is now free for anything non-commercial, plus there's an RPi image

#141
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't hold me to timelines, but we're definitely headed in the direction of being more open and transparent. We're hearing that this is important to our customers and the community alike. Stay tuned!

You are not John "patent troll" Chen right? Your ceo suck

he retired last year, but it's amusing to think of some exec-level ceo going onto forums to peddle merch.

with BB's stock performance : maybe?

Re: QNX is now free for anything non-commercial, plus there's an RPi image

#142
post #23

I don't want to create an account just to know if it'll work on a pi zero w, will it?

https://blackberry.qnx.com/en/developers/board-support-packa... - no need to create an account, BSPs listed here and you can filter by several fields.

As I was scrolling down, I saw all the TI Jacinto and Sitara dev boards, and I wondered if there might be one for the Beaglebone. And indeed, scroll a bit further!

That's convenient, as I have a lot more of those sitting around than I do Pis at the moment.

Re: QNX is now free for anything non-commercial, plus there's an RPi image

#143

I still remember being blown away by the single-floppy QNX demo that included a web browser. It was so fast . I wish you guys the best. I can only imagine what a gordian knot it must be getting all the legal ducks in a row to actually open things up. Like others have mentioned, after two rug pulls, we're all wary, but there's so much to enjoy about QNX, I hope you manage to get traction with this.

That QNX demo floppy was _magical_ back in the late 90's, revealing just how fast things _could_ feel on a 486 DX2 or DX4 CPU compared to the same use on Linux/Windows at the time.

I've always had a somewhat positive view of QNX since then, but intermediate ownership and open/commercial status changes always kept me away from it. Sadly, this "opening" is familiar enough, and previous experience lead me to believe unless it gets a truly open GPL license and a large enough FOSS community to maintain a fork, this'll just get rug pulled again...

Re: QNX is now free for anything non-commercial, plus there's an RPi image

#144
post #45

If only you could believe them. QNX has been "opened" twice before. Each time, there was a rug pull, and it went closed again. Before the first rug pull, open source groups routinely added QNX to their target list. There was a Firefox for QNX. Eclipse had QNX as a target. GCC and most of the Gnu command line tools could be built for QNX. There was a desktop environment, Photon. I used that as a primary desktop for th…

Shitty dx is baked into RIM/Blackberry's institutional DNA. I had a long conversation with their engineering people way back before BB10 came out. At the time you had to apply to get access to the full blackberry SDK, and IIRC you also had to sign an NDA. Meanwhile Android and iOS were in full swing and wouldn't you know it, the platforms that had better developer experience, that prioritized making it easy to write…

It was worse than an NDA! You also had to start your application with a trip to a notary to get your ID confirmed.

And if their signing servers were down…You couldn’t load had just compiled onto your own dev / test device.

I loved using my blackberry but I hated developing against it. Bb10 was its own little adventure but had similar draconian dx

Re: QNX is now free for anything non-commercial, plus there's an RPi image

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also I wonder how many applications really need more real time responsiveness than you can get out of Linux. We even have https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/09/real-time-linux-is-o... If I use Linux I know I won't have to have a discussion about licensing, I know I won't get rug pulled, etc. Also the ban on commercial use is heinous. I am going through this with Arangodb right now. I love the product, but I have no…

rt linux is not appropriate for many hard realtime requirements i have seen some try and fail in an effort to save $perceived_value

Agree but I have seen more people wrongly think they need hard real time than people incorrectly picking their kernel.

Re: QNX is now free for anything non-commercial, plus there's an RPi image

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also I wonder how many applications really need more real time responsiveness than you can get out of Linux. We even have https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/09/real-time-linux-is-o... If I use Linux I know I won't have to have a discussion about licensing, I know I won't get rug pulled, etc. Also the ban on commercial use is heinous. I am going through this with Arangodb right now. I love the product, but I have no…

rt linux is not appropriate for many hard realtime requirements i have seen some try and fail in an effort to save $perceived_value

I don’t doubt this but it’s worth noting that I believe spacex uses Linux as their RTOS.

Re: QNX is now free for anything non-commercial, plus there's an RPi image

#147
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a good libre real-time OS you would recommend over it?

chibios is great, but I haven't followed their culture or licensing in a few years now. my experiences then would lead me to recommend it, though.

ChibiOS doesn't really compete in the same space as QNX. It's a single address space executive that's more like FreeRTOS than QNX.

Re: QNX is now free for anything non-commercial, plus there's an RPi image

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

rt linux is not appropriate for many hard realtime requirements i have seen some try and fail in an effort to save $perceived_value

I don’t doubt this but it’s worth noting that I believe spacex uses Linux as their RTOS.

SpaceX can afford that by their _very_ resilient design and accepting, even anticipating failure.

Re: QNX is now free for anything non-commercial, plus there's an RPi image

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now, if QNX is serious about this, the way to go is to use the licensing model Epic uses for Unreal Engine. Unreal Engine is behind most AAA game titles. The basic terms are that you can download the source and use it for anything you want, and there's no charge until you get the first $1 million in revenue from your product. Then Epic takes a 5% royalty.[2] This has been extremely successful for Epic. There's not…

Even more critically, dual-license commercial and AGPLv3 to avoid the AWS loophole (hosted services or source modifications without licensing it commercial.) AGPLv3 is perfect for kernel and userspace tools because, while it doesn't guarantee licensing revenues, as soon as they do anything to modify it they have to release those changes to ANY users of the system, whether downstream distributors or simply users of th…

My honest opinion is that the prevalence of licenses like GPLv3 and AGPLv3 end up indirectly leading to people recreating the wheel, rather than using the wheel that exists already.

Re: QNX is now free for anything non-commercial, plus there's an RPi image

#150
Thanks, John. QNX has always been one of my favourite OSs (I still have my Blackberry Q10) since I learned C on it in the mid 1980’s. A full-featured multi-tasking OS running from a 360K floppy on a PC/XT is not something easily forgotten.

I’m glad the company is making this investment again.

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