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Microsoft open-sources ThreadX

theregister.com

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Re: Microsoft open-sources ThreadX

#41

Post by jzb »

delfinom wrote: post #2

Another piece of software goes to rot under the Eclipse Foundation, woo A foundation so bureaucratic that there is OSS that new people can't take over because it requires years of bureaucratic process.

It will only rot if nobody wants to work on it. If Eclipse is horribly bureaucratic, then developers who don't want to participate in an Eclipse project may now fork it.

Seems like it's a win-win. If there's a group that can't abide whatever constraints exist with Eclipse, then they can fork. If not, it's still better off being open than not. I don't really see a downside here.

Re: Microsoft open-sources ThreadX

#42

Post by j16sdiz »

krylon wrote: post #27
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 ?

My understanding is you need to re-certify in some form upon changing anything about the code. I'm not sure if it's the same process each time or if you can do some kind of incremental re-certification for minor updates. Either way, Microsoft can afford to do that if they want to. But I would (naively) expect the rules to apply to anyone who wants to modify the code base, I don't think Microsoft has any privileged po…

Microsoft have access to the material they used in previous certification, this may make the process a lot cheaper.

Re: Microsoft open-sources ThreadX

#43

Post by AlotOfReading »

demondemidi wrote: post #34
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 ?

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 before, regardless of whether that's actually effective at issue reduction/detection. In many cases, they're actually counterproductive and encourage people to focus on minute, obscure error sources rather than addressing significantly more common issues like memory safety and undefined behavior.

Re: Microsoft open-sources ThreadX

#44

Post by dylan604 »

sigzero wrote: post #30
paddy_m wrote: post #16

It took a lot of reading of that blogpost before I realized that it was about an operating system. I seriously thought it was about some parallel threading standard. Especially for a broad announcement like that, they should give readers some more context.

What? It's in the first paragraph of the linked announcement. Unless you didn't know what RTOS was an acronym for but that is a simple google request.

It's also accepted publishing standards to expand an acronym the first time it is used. Of course, kids today don't know what standards are because a boomer made them or some such nonsense excuse for just I do what I want

Re: Microsoft open-sources ThreadX

#45

Post by cinntaile »

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?

Re: Microsoft open-sources ThreadX

#46

Post by robertlagrant »

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.

> I believe it's wishful thinking.

Why?

Re: Microsoft open-sources ThreadX

#47

Post by robertlagrant »

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…

They're the vendor, not the manufacturer. Dell don't release all the source code for the components they construct their devices from.

Re: Microsoft open-sources ThreadX

#49

Post by bri3d »

MegaDeKay wrote: post #21
joezydeco wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the notion here that opening up ThreadX will start to allow visibility into VideoCore, since ThreadX runs the thing. But an RTOS/scheduler is only a miniscule part of a GPU and since Broadcom never opens up anything, I believe it's a false hope. Opening up any GPU code, from any maker, invites patent lawsuits from competitors. And then the injunctions start flying.

"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…

ThreadX is just the scheduler / OS functionality. There are tons of other components in the firmware (namely, the parts that actually do things) which are still encumbered by patent and copyright issues, not to mention the DRM modules which are somewhat security-by-obscurity based.

It's one step closer to an open Pi firmware in some ways, but probably not a meaningful step.

Re: Microsoft open-sources ThreadX

#50

Post by rickette »

llm_nerd wrote: post #14

For those wondering why Azure has an RTOS, Microsoft bought Express Logic and their ThreadX RTOS in 2019. ThreadX is in use on a large number of resource constrained microcontrollers. The Azure branding makes little sense, beyond maybe that IoT things communicate with the cloud or something.

The branding is probably also due to AWS having FreeRTOS https://aws.amazon.com/freertos/
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