Mike Hall on Choosing Embedded Linux over Windows 75
prostoalex writes "Mike Hall from Microsoft asks the audience why they would choose Linux over Microsoft for embedded projects. He provides a point-by-point description of benefits of Microsoft's products (Windows CE and Windows XP Embedded) and points out that starting out on Windows-based embedded platform might save development and testing time."
Plain old FUD (Score:4, Interesting)
and ends with:
The keyword here is... (Score:2, Interesting)
Sure, if you're lucky...
Re:Even if it saves development time ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Generally seapking, commercial software makes getting things off the ground easy -- it's an important competitive point and vendors pay attention to this. Open source stuff is usually poorly documented, has a fairly rough learning curve , but has many benefits that offset this. In a sense, open source sits somewhere between "make" and "buy" on the make/buy decision continuum. It takes a bit more sweat equity to get going, but it gives you more freedom down the road, provided you're still on the road.
Which software components you use is not purely a technical decision -- at least that's what I keep telling management. You have to look down the road and see the business scenario that you're expecting to be in. Supppose I could save two week on a twelve week development effort by using a commercial software product. If the software is only going to have a couple of dozen users, then from a business perspective the licensing costs and the impact of restrictions are relatively minimal. On the other hand, if I'm going to be equipping 2,500 users (much less 250,000), the two week difference is inconsequential.
Using software from a vendor means you are entering into a business relationship with that vendor. This has consequences. Small consequences for small projects, big consequences for big projects. One of the great things about open source is that you don't have to enter into a business relationship with a vendor; or if you do you can replace the vendor if you disagree. That said, Microsoft is probably one of the better software vendors to enter into a relationship with, leaving aside whatever you happen to think of their products. Their product strategies are way more stable than the industry norm (which isn't saying much) and as long as your product has no disruptive potential (disruptive to Microsoft's position or planned positions).
If, for example, I was developing a computerized milling machine, entering into a relationship with Microsoft wouldn't be a complicated business decision, and choosing/not choosing a Microsoft product could be done on a basis of pure technical merit. The number of units shipped are small, and the price of the units are high, so the cost of the license is hardly worth considering. What is most important, Microsoft has no strategic designs on the machine equipment market, so far as I know.
On the other hand, if I were entering the set-top PVR market, the decision would be driven almost entirely by business strategic concerns. The number of units shipped is large, and the margins tight. Furthermore, Microsoft has strategic designs in this area, and I could on one hand end up on the wrong end of the DRM stick if I don't play ball with them. On the other hand, I could find myself in the position of office suite vendors in the early 90s -- competing with very vendor who supplies the heart of my system.
In those kinds of situations, what you need really need to make the platform decision is a crystal ball. Which is why I avoid them. But that's the reason, I supppose, the world needs entrepreneurs.
Porting woes (Score:3, Interesting)
A minor anecdote to illustrate the problem. Yesterday I performed a code review on a trivial piece of code. I wrote the Motif version in three days. They wrote the Windows version in one month. My code (using the horribly "bloated" Motif) was 850 lines. Their code using MFC was 5200 lines of code. Before you blame an outdated MFC and recommend moving to