Welcome Jason, August is probably a dumb time to launch a new open source project, especially when a good deal of the contributors of the projects are from Europe and take vacation then. :) Certainly, I think we all see that there are approximately 3 broad markets to go after: a> Embedded / machine to machine interaction (sometimes referred to as telematics, examples include weather stations, HVAC systems, etc.). In the USA, providers like Aeris.net provision cellular backchannel for pennies and offer <1K packet data with 2-3 second latency covering about 98% of the populated area of the country. Obviously, QualComm and others offer similar provisioning services. EnhydraME will be important here provided the cost impact of upgrading the weather station hardware from an 8088 chip to a 80386 doesn't wipe out the benefit of a standards/Java based approach versus native code burned on the chip. Aeris is very sceptical that Java on weather stations / telematics stations will happen... b> Industrial applications: these are the field workforce automation apps, warehouse apps, trucking services (both location, capacity, etc), etc. style apps that either use the Aeris/QualComm cellular networks, wireless LAN networks [wi-fi / 802.11b], other proprietary networks, etc. It is likely that Micro App Servers, like the ME project, will be extremely valuable here, especially with kSOAP, kUDDI, kHTTP/Locumi, etc. c> Consumer applications: these are the least interesting to me, in that there is no business model for these in the USA today [no imode like shared revenue systems that pay providers of content]. Is this about how you at WindRiver segment the market? kb -----Original Message----- From: me-admin@enhydra.org [mailto:me-admin@enhydra.org]On Behalf Of Jason S. Anderson Sent: Wednesday, August 29, 2001 8:00 AM To: me@enhydra.org Subject: ME: I'll start a new thread then... ...by saying Hello and introducing myself. I just joined the list a couple of days ago; I work at Wind River, who if you work in the embedded space you've probably heard of before. :) I should first say that I joined of my own accord -- this isn't a sanctioned or sponsored activity. However I felt that one of the important success criteria for any software platform in the embedded space is support of a broad inventory of operating systems and hardware platforms; I'm curious how others feel about this. I haven't thought much about how I can help, just that I would like to. I do have pretty good access to hardware of various CPU families, and if the project felt it was worth pursuing I could also work to proxy within the organization on things like compatibility with our commercial RTOS's. One specific comment (and I haven't finished reading through all of the existing document, so bear with me) is that I notice a significant mention of wireless devices. A broader opportunity you may not want to ignore is that as 'web services' become more established, other types of networked devices (wireless or not, consumer or not) will also either want to be able to connect to those services or expose services of their own. These are just ideas. Any others? -Jason ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jason Anderson email: jason.anderson@windriver.com Manager, Platforms Operations Programs ph: 510-749-2202 Manager, FreeBSD Engineering fax: 510-749-2010 Wind River cell: 510-708-3588 _______________________________________________ ME mailing list ME@enhydra.org http://www.enhydra.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/me |