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

blackberry.qnx.com

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

#181

Post by gerdesj »

sitzkrieg wrote: post #108
PaulHoule wrote: post #89

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

[flagged]

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

#183

Post by AlotOfReading »

scheme271 wrote: post #173
stevesimmons wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who knows only that QNX is a RTOS and that "real time" is good in some vague hand-wavy way, I found this 2015 comment a very succinct, concrete and illuminating description of one aspect of QNX's architecture that makes it properly real-time. So thank you very much for the link.

"Real time" is only good if you need guaranteed responsiveness within certain time limits. It can actually be suboptimal and slow you down if you don't need it and want to optimize other things like throughput.

Though in practice, the act of designing your code for realtime tends to produce better performance than the status quo of doing nothing. Most uses of this warning seem intended to promote the latter rather than to get people thinking about their actual requirements.

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

#184

Post by xarope »

vundercind wrote: post #96

QNX and BeOS were the only operating systems I tried in the early '00s that could make old single-core mid-90s Pentiums feel excellent and snappy to use. Far, far better than any Windows version, or Linux. I assume it's mostly scheduler stuff and much better multimedia stacks, in both cases. I always hoped the operating systems of the future would feel more like that. Closest we've got is probably iOS and it cheats b…

I feel sad that people don't remember OS/2 anymore. It was also able to run multiple dos windows, have video running in the background etc, and that was in the late 90's.

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

#185

Post by lolinder »

dystnitem4r3 wrote: post #137
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #69

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…

> 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 the network services they provide.

This is actually fairly ambiguous in the text. It says "if you modify the Program, your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source of your version". This is fairly straightforward when applied to a database—if you modify an AGPL database and offer it as a hosted version then your users are obviously interacting with it over the network—but much less straightforward when talking about an AGPL program that doesn't intentionally build in network connectivity.

The GPL FAQ addresses this provision [0] and it seems to support a more conservative reading. My understanding from the FAQ is that a Program that is not "expressly designed to accept user requests and send responses over a network" derives no benefit from being AGPL vs GPL, even if a web app interacts with that AGPL code over IPC or similar.

[0] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#AGPLv3InteractingR...

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

#186

Post by sov »

gosub100 wrote: post #123
parl_match wrote: post #118

Why would I use QNX for any project when RTOS Linux is mature? Why would I care? So you can rug-pull license changes? Should I use it because it's cute? It's academically interesting? Sure, I've used QNX in the past for those reasons. The next time I pick a soc for a project, and its associated bsp, I'm not going to look for QNX. I'm either going to use whatever freertos distro they include or install the android bui…

You would use it if you wanted to get a job doing RTOS dev and wanted to show you had some skin in the game.

any commercial rtos shop where QNX may be appropriate is either using 1. some wacky expensive proprietary rtos that you've never heard of, 2. freertos or 3. real-time linux depending on what they need. asking what makes QNX a compelling rtos when freertos exists, is widely supported and used, and has an MIT license is a very valid question.

further, no one in embedded actually cares what RTOS you used. they are all similar enough that you won't get stuck if it's a brand new RTOS

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

#187

Post by wolrah »

toast0 wrote: post #84
wolrah wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are the brains of a ton of cars on the market, like all Ford cars. Used for complex calculations like automatic transmissions. I would seriously doubt that QNX or anything like it resembling a "real OS" is running on the automatic transmission. If the transmission controller is running any OS at all it's likely a microcontroller running a much more specialized RTOS. QNX is very common in automotive application…

> Ford's "Sync 3" and "Sync 4/4A" infotainment systems run on QNX as well, though being just infotainment they didn't really care about the realtime aspect (though I'm sure stability was a big thing compared to their Windows CE based predecessors). I've got a Sync 2 car, and I can't say I've noticed instability. The UI toolkit is slow , but the story on that is someone's cousin did something some Macromedia stuff tha…

FWIW I have a 2015 that shipped with a late version of MyFordTouch and I upgraded in 2021 to Sync 3 hardware from a 2016 model.

Whatever version of MFT my car shipped with was pretty bad, hitting the category button in the satellite radio controls was about a 1/5 chance of a crash. It also wasn't great at handling my USB drive full of MP3s. A few months later an update came out that was actually never officially released for my car, but if you put the right files on the USB drive it installed just fine. After that update those crashes were gone. All that was left, and it happened until I upgraded the system, was maybe once every 2-3 months the Bluetooth stack crashed and took the entire media UI with it, I'd have to use the physical Source button to switch to AM/FM and then switch back to regain control though whatever was playing would keep working.

I upgraded to Sync 3 and haven't crashed it since. Sometimes it gets in a fight with my wireless android auto adapter, but it's never had an issue in wired mode which is all it officially supports so I'm not going to fault it there.

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

#188

Post by ranger_danger »

eikenberry wrote: post #132
sitzkrieg wrote: post #108

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

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

I believe seL4 is formally verified.

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

#189

Post by michrassena »

I hope the QNX can fix their antiquated password process on this site. Apparently I still had an account from the last time they opened things up, and I asked for a password reset. I received a six character temporary password by email and used that log in. Then when I changed the password (which wasn't prompted for when I logged in, I had to hunt down the change password option), I was limited to alphanumerics and 20 characters. Edit: I'll also add that the entire process of setting up an account, getting a license, granting yourself a license, then downloading the software center all just to download the Raspberry Pi image was a lot of roundabout steps for something I'm going to play around with on the weekend and never look at again. I know this is an exercise to gain customers, but still a hassle even for those familiar with the process. Ultimately it reads as if QNX is deathly afraid of giving something away.
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