I'm old enough to remember when "roll your own" referred to cigarettes, both legal and not. So perhaps I shouldn't be surprised to learn that when it comes to real-time operating systems, "roll your own" is rolling away.
Turns out that only about 37% of developers recently surveyed say they use non-commercial operating systems as part of their development efforts, and that's down from 43% who said the same thing in 2001, according to a new report from Venture Development Corp. What's more, the percentage of developers who use proprietary operating systems will continue to decline, VDC predicts.
The reason for the decline is pretty simple: New demands—including networking, increasingly complex software, and advancing hardware—all require the use of a commercial OS.
That's good news for Wind River, Green Hills, and other RTOS vendors, but not so good for your local OS jockey. Still, for those seeking a middle way, there's always Linux. VDC cites the open-source OS for its low costs, free availability of source code, ability to customize, and support of a global open-source community. And increasingly, you can now get Linux from the mainstream vendors, too.
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