Re: Topical
@Yet Another Anonymous coward - "So what do you do if you have a load of highly skilled OS engineers and your very rich customers with massive expensive support contracts are all demanding Linux."
Yes, but are the customers demanding it from Wind River, or are they going to other companies? It could be that Wind River's customer base is drying up.
That's the thing that customers like and vendors hate about Linux, there's very little vendor lock-in.
To be honest, I was very surprised when Intel bought Wind River. If I was a customer at that time, I would have been planning my exit strategy ASAP. Intel is rarely the first choice for CPUs these days in embedded markets, and having your OS supplier bought up by a company desperate to get (back) into the embedded market can only be bad news. It would raise serious questions about Wind RIver's continuing commitment to the CPUs which make up the bulk of the market, and it would potentially raise problems when working with the chip designers of ARM, MIPS, Power, etc because of concerns about maintaining confidentiality.
This latest news isn't going to help their credibility with customers.
Given all these factors together, I'm not surprised to see Wind River's future starting to look a little uncertain.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
