Solaris going opensource ?

An article on slashdot suggests that Solaris 10 will be open-sourced. It further raises concerns about the effect of this on Linux. I do not see why it should be a cause for concern.

First of all, linux is not the means or the end, its just an example of a successful FLOSS project. If the success of Linux could really force companies like Sun to take notice, and release products that were not originally developed using the floss way, and they turn out to be better, why should the Free Software community worry ? Let the best OS survive.

Having said that, I still don't see how Free/Open sourced Solaris can be a threat. Solaris for intel has been free for a long time, but has that affected the adoption of Linux ? Not really, because for corporates , 'free' as in beer isn't everything. So If Solaris at all becomes Free & Open, it would only affect those who were hindered in their adoption of Solaris because of TCOs. And besides the primary platform for solaris is sparc, just as the primary platform for linux is i386. We have versions of linux running on sparc, and versions of solaris on intel, and while both are free, they don't really compete. So the only threat that is there, is for those who have a sparc and couldn't afford Solaris uptil now.

In the end, any such news is good news, and its only microsoft thats going to lose, as it becomes more and more isolated.

Relief

After a brief, or not so brief hiatus, I am back. The last few days have been difficult, and I have decided not to switch jobs anytime soon again, if God so wills. Feeling quite relieved now, after some stressful days of decision making.

This is just one of those posts where you let the world know you still exist in a physical sense.

EDA tools

I am on the lookout for EDA tools, simple circuit simulation ones, that can be used in a classroom, to instruct first year engineering students. Something like a GPL'ed Electronics Workbench would do just fine. Since the tool would be used in a Lab Setup, and students would be having only a few hours to get familiar with (and not an entire course), it should have a GUI (must), and it should be intuitive. If you know of one, post a comment here.

Initial search on source-forge yields three possibilities.

The first one is DigitalSimulator, which looks pretty stable (& bloated too) and should suffice for digital experiments. Only thing that surprises me is its Java based, yet glued to MS Windows platfroms.

Then there is Qucs (Qt universal circuit simulator) , thats still in its 0.04 version, and would require some improvements before its ready for prime-time, but shows promise. This one of course, is more oriented towards electrical components (no digital circuits, no transistors/diodes either)

And another one is tkgate (event driven digital circuit simulator with a tcl/tk-based graphical editor). I am yet to explore it and find out what an ED-DCS is. Time to get back to work !!