On Jan 23, 2004, at 4:33 PM, Ed Skinner wrote:

> On Friday 23 January 2004 16:08, Chris Gehlker wrote:
>> On Jan 23, 2004, at 12:02 PM, Ed Skinner wrote:
>>>      Linux in particular, and FOSS in general, are about 10x more
>>> difficult to
>>> use in an embedded system than any of the commercial RTOSs or other
>>> commercial products. (I base that multiplier on my experience in 
>>> these
>>> two
>>> specific fields.) For more traditionally configured systems (other 
>>> than
>>> embedded), the multiplier would be a smaller number, but still
>>> significantly
>>> higher than 1x.
>>
>> I keep hearing that TRON based systems and ITRON in particular 
>> dominate
>> the embedded market. In fact it is often reported that in terms of
>> total deployments TRON beats Windows + *nix hands down. This family of
>> OSes is available under the TOPPERS license. I don't see TOPPERS on 
>> the
>> OSI approved list but maybe they simply haven't asked. The Ruby 
>> license
>> isn't there either. Certainly nobody could seriously call TOPPERS a
>> commercial license.
>
>      Hmmm, I beg to differ. TRON and ITRON have a significant 
> following only
> in Japan. In the remainder of the world the embedded rankings (if my 
> memory
> serves me) are:
> 1) Systems using home-grown or "no" OSs
> 2) Wind River's VxWorks
> 3) uhm..., not sure but the bigger players include OSE, 
> Windows-variants,
> Linux, Integrity, ThreadX, QNX Neutrino, pSOS+, TRON, ITRON [but I 
> don't know
> how they differ], Nucleus, OS-9 and a gaggle of others.
>      I did find a survey that ranks TRON #1 (see
> http://www.assoc.tron.org/eng/research/data/survey1999/result-e.html) 
> but
> also note that this is a survey conducted by the TRON Association. I 
> think
> their sampling methodology is heavily biased toward TRON users, and 
> that it
> contains a disproportionate number of respondents from Japan at the 
> expense
> of North America, Europe and the remainder of Asia.

Well, I bow to your expertise but it seems that  the article I read 
(some time ago) was talking about total deployments. I imagine that 
only Japan and the rest of Asia really matter by that metric.