Sunday, September 23, 2007

QNX Hybrid Software Model

QNX Software Systems asked me to write about their new hybrid software licensing and development model. Here's the link to my article on their website.

The new QNX model blends open source practices with commercial incentives for embedded systems; opens their development process to customers and community alike; and stimulates market opportunities and design innovation.

While this model isn't entirely open source, QNX learned the benefits of open source from its involvement with Eclipse. QNX now wants to offer those open source benefits to its customers and business partners.

Much of my law and counseling practice involves assisting commercial companies to adopt open source in their software and their development practices--without necessarily giving away the crown jewels to their commercial competitors for free. This involves a strategy for giving to the commons and a strategy for reasonable withholding. The goal is develop a licensing plan for software that reflects and respects the ethics of the open source community, while honoring the responsibilities to customers, employees and shareholders to maintain a profitable commercial venture.

Read more at the link above or at the main QNX website.

1 comment:

MichelM said...

Bonjour Larry :

I have a paper copy of your article entitled «The New QNX Hybrid Software Model» but would like an electronic copy - the link to that article that leads from your site to the QNX web site does not work - access to your article there, although referenced to, is inactive (maybe it was after RIm bought QNX ? ... my speculation of the day) ... in any case, as you are the author of the article, I suppose that you can send me a (PDF) copy directly ?

Thanks in avdvance for your help.

All the best,

Michel Mellinger, Canada
melltran@videotron.ca