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Perhaps they meant it's ALWAYS better to have an open OS if you don't have access to the proprietary, closed source product and
development tools.

You must admit it is generally easier to modify a piece of consumer electronics gear running Linux.
Windows CE devices aren't too hard because the development tools are available.
But closed OS without access to development tools are difficult to modify to your own needs.

-----Original Message-----
From: rockbox-bounces_at_cool.haxx.se [mailto:rockbox-bounces_at_cool.haxx.se] On Behalf Of Fred Maxwell
Sent: Friday, March 05, 2004 3:56 PM
To: Rockbox development
Subject: Re: Another possible candidate for expansion of Rockbox?

eD\/ARd0 F/\KEn^M3 wrote:

> I believe it's ALWAYS better to have an open OS.

After 20+ years in the embedded systems arena, I'll have to disagree.
The finest real-time OSs available are proprietary, closed source
products. They weren't developed by taking a desktop or server OS and
stripping stuff out. They were not designed to maintain compatability
with old Unix apps. They were purpose-built to be small, fast, and
bulletproof. If you want to know the worst-case interrupt latency in
clock cycles, it's probably already been published. Try finding that
for ucLinux.

When building something, you want responsible vendors who have something
to lose. If a failure of VRTX causes NASA to lose a satellite, it's
going to hurt the people who make VRTX -- in a major, ugly way. If some
piece of Linux code written by a 19 year old in the Ukraine fails, what
does he have to lose?

All things being equal, and open OS is the better choice, but things are
seldom equal.

Regards,
   Fred Maxwell

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