KaeilOS : Domande e Risposte Frequenti

Legal FAQs

Q. Is KaeilOS violating GPL license ?
A. Definitely not! This is a frequent misunderstanding of GPL. The General Public License is designed to make sure that you receive source code althought it has a price. When you purchase KaeilOS you get *all* the sources. Please consider that we are offering a service into KaeilOS CDROM.

Q. Why KaeilOS is GNU/GPL and is not free (gratis)?
A. When you speak of free software, you are referring to freedom, not price. The General Public License is designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish) and that you receive source code althought it has a price.

Q. KaeilOS is GNU/GPL, so where are sources?
A. Koan worked a lot selecting and assembling all the best components of the free software world. When you purchase KaeilOS you get this work ready to use. KaeilOS sources are all GPL and you can find them somewhere in the net, you can learn how to assemble them, look for the single components and download them replicating our work. When you buy a copy of KaeilOS you are actually purchasing a 'ready-to-run' service and not only a simple CDROM. This is the reason why we are asking money for it. However we provide some essential links to these sources.

 

Technical FAQs

Q. Why embedded Linux at all?
A. For many reasons, too numerous to enumerate here. Mature code base, well-tested code, vast support, free tools, standard APIs, small and modular footprints, real-time extensions, etc. etc. Take your pick.

Q. Will my applications be "tainted" and become open source too?
A. Not necessarily, it is possible to be a good citizen with the GPL while retaining your own proprietary intellectual property. However, how you use this distribution is up to you. For Koan Custom Solutions customers we advise the best way to approach a particular application as it depends a great deal on individual circumstances.

Q. Why not use other commercial Linux?
A. KaeilOS supports a broad range of architectures, is based upon the mainstream Linux kernel. And it is the only GPL licensed commercial linux embedded distribution.

Q. Why not use eCos instead?
A. eCos is a fine product but it ain't Linux... there's only a relatively small group of people working on eCos compared to Linux so the leverage is correspondingly smaller (smaller pool of drivers, network stacks, applications, experienced developers, etc.). Stuff is portable between the two environments, but that requires additional effort.

Q. Why not use Eclipse IDE instead on Anjuta IDE?
A. KaeilOS has choosed to use Anjuta instead of Eclipse because Anjuta is lighter and has a complete support for wxWidgets applications.

Q. Why not just roll my own embedded Linux?
A. That's an awful lot of work! By the time you've spent man-months/man-years trimming down Linux and going through the learning curve you're going to pretty much end up with something like we've produced. If you have commercial project deadlines why not take advantage of someone else's expertise?

Q. Can I develop proprietary applications with KaeilOS?
A. KaeilOS is a suite of tools for kernel and file system components generation, you can develop whatever you want selecting the appropriate license and make it run on the target.

Q. Can I pay Koan to help me?
A. Yes of course, our service is providing the customer with top level developer assistance and custom engineering.

Q. Does KaeilOS support uClinux?
A. Yes, using the KTX Toolkit is it possible to select the appropriate target glibc library for MMU or MMU-Less equipped processors.

Q. Does KaeilOS provide real time extension?
A. Yes, KaeilOS uses RTAI real-time extension based on Adeos to provide a flexible environment for sharing hardware resources among multiple operating systems, or among multiple instances of a single OS.

Q. Can I develop proprietary applications using RTAI?
A. Yes, RTAI license is GPL for the kernel core patches and LGPL for the user-space layer.

Q. Can Koan help me migrating real time applications based on vxWorks (TM) ?
A. Yes, KaeilOS with RTAI/fusion offer a vxWorks(TM) skin that is a kind of compatibility layer. So you can have vxWork to Linux migration with an easy to use system library, and it's royalty free !

vxWorks(TM) is a trademark of Wind River Inc