[About FreeRTOS]
Open source software is the source of frequent debate - where often the same old pro and con arguments are raised. Every effort is made to ensure FreeRTOS is as open and easy to use as possible, so this page is provided to demonstrate why many anti open source arguments are just not applicable when using FreeRTOS.| Argument | Counter-argument when using FreeRTOS |
| "Open source software is badly supported" | FreeRTOS.org has an active support forum and also boasts optional commercial support which is provided by a large engineering company. |
| "Incorporating open source means you risk having to open source your entire application" | FreeRTOS.org is licensed such that only the kernel is open source. Application code that uses the kernel can remain closed source and proprietary. |
| "Open source software ends up costing much more" | FreeRTOS.org is completely free to download, experiment with and deploy. Each port comes with a pre-configured demo application to ensure you start with a known good and working project that can then be tailored to meet your needs - getting you up and running very quickly. Should at some point you require commercial licensing or support then packages are available at very competitive prices, so you have nothing to loose. |
| "Open source software is badly written" | FreeRTOS.org is commercial grade, stable and reliable. There are even safety critical versions based on it, with improvements from the safety critical certification being fed back into the open source code base (although not the new safety related features). |
| "Open source code becomes fragmented, with many different versions available" | The FreeRTOS.org release procedure is very tightly controlled with all official ports being updated simultaneously. Latest and past releases are available in .zip files. The head revision is available from a publically accessible SVN repository. Naturally, occasionally errors are made, but these are quickly spotted by the large user base (more than 6000 downloads per month [conservative figure given]) and are documented as soon as they are brought to our attention. |
| "Use of open source code leaves you at risk of IP infringement" | Only code of known origin is included in official versions. If you are still concerned about IP infringement, purchase a commercial license to receive standard indemnification. |
| "Open source projects have no longevity" | Neither do some commercial products. I could name a few commercial tools that are now defunct, if these had been open source at least users would have the source and could continue to use the tool. As it happens FreeRTOS.org has been around for nearly 6 years already, and is going very strong. |
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment