1. Embedding success in your business www.avnet-embedded.eu
Introduction
PC versus Mac. IoS versus Android. Embedded versus
standard licence. DVD vs. Blu-Ray. Our personal, business
and technical lives seem to confront us with ever more
decisions, and ten years from now, when things have
moved on, there’ll be a whole new set of decisions that we
have to consider taking. C’est la vie.
Some of these decision situations have proven extremely
persistent and durable, however. In a business and
technology context, for example, the face-off between
Open Source (usually Linux) and the alternative (usually
Microsoft), seems to be pretty much eternal. And what are
we supposed to do about it? As humans, we have no more
scientific way of arriving at a decision than by weighing
up the specific pros and cons of each alternative and then
opting for the greater good or the lesser evil. No solution,
it must be remembered, is perfect.
But then this is where I start to get hot under the collar.
Because the fundamental ingredients of the decision-
making process are clarity, veracity and completeness of
information. When these are distorted into muddiness,
half-truths and “the edited version”, the process of making
a decision becomes a farce, which then self-propagates
and becomes a myth. And before long, you have critical
decisions being made on the basis of folklore.
And, sadly, that is exactly what the supposedly transparent
idiom of Open Source has, in many circumstances, become.
Nick Donaldson, Director, Avnet Embedded nick.donaldson@avnet-embedded.eu
Open Source – the myths in the market
The mythmaking of Open Source – and particularly Linux
- is something I encounter in the marketplace every day.
And, as with all myths, there tends to be a kernel (sorry!)
of fact that lends credence to the claim. But in this paper,
we’re going beyond that to expose the wider untruths
around Linux and the way in which it is typically positioned
in relation to its competitors. You will discover that all is not
what it seems.
Linux is free. (Oh, sorry, it’s not.)
Let’s dispense with this illusion right now. Linux is not free
- for many reasons. Firstly, if you buy Linux through one
of the many higher-profile distributors in the marketplace,
although the source code may be accessible at no charge,
any commercial use of that code triggers an obligation on
the part of the user to accept a Linux support contract.
As this is often priced per licence and requires upfront
payment, it can be both extremely expensive and highly
injurious to cash flow!
(Microsoft, on the other hand, appear rather more cash-
flow friendly – indeed, they don’t charge for licences at all
until the final product has actually shipped.)
Even if you don’t source Linux through one of these
distributors, there are still some wicked associated
costs. The skill pool of Linux engineers is severely
limited compared to the ubiquity of Microsoft engineers,
for example, and the absence of any single centralised
certification system for Linux engineers makes them even
more difficult to locate in the first place. It’s simple: Linux
engineers cost significantly more to find and employ.
In fact, one recent article stated that salaries for Linux
engineers are rising at nearly double the rate of other tech
professionals. And, in the same piece, it is revealed that
9 out of 10 hiring managers say it is difficult to find Linux
professionals and that this figure is up almost 4 points
on 2012.
The face-off between Open Source (usually Linux) and the
alternative (usually Microsoft), seems to be pretty much eternal.
Lies, damned lies, and operating systems
Time to close in on the myths of Open Source

2. High cost, increasingly inaccessible supply? Doesn’t sound
anything like “free” to me – in fact, it sounds like “dear and
getting dearer by the minute”!
Linux is a stable, low-risk operating system. Honestly.
I hear this call from Linux adherents all the time. Yet
nobody has ever managed to answer me this: if Linux is
so stable, then why does Linux refuse to indemnify users
against problems caused by the operating system?
This is the way it works. If you build your huge, expensive
(for the reasons we’ve seen above), complex software
solution on Linux, then you discover that it doesn’t work
because of a bug in the operating system, you are
not protected.
Instead, that costly support contract that we talked about
earlier, which Linux have by this stage already locked you
into, will impose a legal obligation on you to spend money,
time and effort redeveloping your code to circumvent the
operating system limitation.
Low-risk? Not if they won’t put their money where their
mouth is and “fess up” to their own mistakes.
Linux’s Open Source heritage puts it above the vagaries
of the market. Amen.
The concept of a not-for-profit organisation that does right
by its user community before it does right by anyone else is
a seductive one. But the reality is this: Linux succumbs to
the same pressures as any other technology provider but,
because it has no profit funding of its own to reinvest when
it needs it, it deals with them so much more poorly.
Take its infamously problematic relationship with the
hardware market, for example. On the one hand, Linux
displays utterly conventional commercial reasoning by not
producing drivers for new hardware until the user base for
that hardware has reached critical mass.
However, on the other, it then finds itself, typically, taking
3 to 6 months to produce the drivers in question – a lead
time that commercial organisations would regard as
economically unsustainable. (Contrast this with Microsoft,
whose hardware drivers are typically available almost
immediately, or, in any event, in short order).
Trapped between community and commerce, Linux is
neither fish nor fowl – and the cost of the ambiguity is
borne by the customer.
Linux runs on all the latest devices and technologies.
Hmmm.
On a purely statistical level, this claim probably does have
that famous grain of truth in it. It does indeed seem likely
that Linux runs on the greatest number of devices and
processors when compared to other operating systems.
But statistics only respect the letter (number?), not the
spirit, of the debate. Let me show you what I mean.
Take touchscreen technology. This is a massive growth
market. A recent report asserts that the screen control IC
market value reached nearly $1.6 billion in 2012, and will
hit $1.8 billion (a growth rate of 17.9%) in 2013. That value
will jump again by 18.3% to nearly $2.2 billion in 2014. So
it’s a horse you’d expect Linux to be backing.
Yet despite this pressing commercial and technical
imperative, as of today Linux has a severely restricted
breadth of driver support for touch screens. If you want a
Linux touch screen driver for the device you produce, you
may well have to pay Linux engineers to write one for you.
Not a very scalable offering for a market that’s about to go
stratospheric, and a significant cost (again) to
your business.
Yes, you’ll encounter Linux all over the place – but often, it
seems, not where it matters most!
Look how many embedded development tools Linux offers.
Isn’t that great?
One of the sagest put-downs that I have ever read says,
with undisguised exasperation:
“Linux is about choice? If I could only have one thing this
year, it would be to eliminate that meme from the collective
consciousness. It is a disease. It strangles the mind...”
If you read the piece further, the point being made is that
there are some situations in which the choice of many
different options simply means the glaring absence of the
most obvious and effective one.
And nowhere is this more evident than in the development
of embedded software, where Linux offers a diverse and
confusing range of development tools – from sources
outside its own development environment. Again, contrast
this with Microsoft, whose embedded development
environment includes its own dedicated development tools
– and for free.
With Linux, “choice” seems to mean “go and find out
for yourselves.”
Linux is a rapid development choice. (If you ignore what
users actually say about it.)
Linux claim their system is easy to use and promotes rapid
development. Well, they wouldn’t say anything else, would
they? And you’re probably thinking that I’m never going to
say anything but the opposite. Fair point.
With Linux, “choice” seems to mean “go and find out for yourselves.

3. So let me instead quote two customers for whom (like all
customers) development cycles played a critical role in
determining their products’ time-to-market and move
into profitability.
The customers’ view
These testimonies come from recent case studies that are
in the public domain and are more eloquent than anything
I could say myself.
ITEC Digital Solutions Product manager Chris Wood
commented that choosing Linux would have “prolonged
the development cycle and slowed the passage of the
company’s digital signage products into profitability.”
Likewise, Corghi Product Manager Danilo Nava says, of
the company’s R.E.M.O. wheel alignment product, “The
lack of reliability of the Open Source software was a major
issue for us, both in our efforts to get the product rapidly
developed and to market, and in our efforts to ensure that
it was fit for purpose for the customer on arrival.”
Wood states that his choice of Windows Embedded has
enabled the company to develop products more quickly and
easily than if they had used Linux – in fact, “up to 20
to 30%”.
Nava estimates that development cycles in the R.E.M.O.
project have been reduced by at least 15% by the use of
Window Embedded software, rather than the Open
Source alternative.
Is it right to hate Linux?
To sum up, no, it isn’t. Linux has numerous strengths that
go way beyond the scope of this paper, and, as my own
engineers would freely tell you, for some applications
Linux and Microsoft, particularly in the embedded space,
effectively “meet in the middle.” I would like to think I
have always been very transparent on that point.
But it’s my view that Linux has traded on its position on
the non-profit moral high ground to actively encourage
a set of mythologies that leave customers wallowing in
misinformation and unwilling to challenge their benefactor.
And that’s just not healthy for any of us.
“ it’s my view that Linux has traded on its position on the
non-profit moral high ground to actively encourage a
set of mythologies that leave customers wallowing in
misinformation and unwilling to challenge their benefactor”
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