“The Embedded Systems Conference is huge! It is much larger than
I had envisioned. Over 60,000 people are gathered here, three times
the number we saw for LinuxWorld in August. The ESC fills the
entire Convention center, flowing into the hallways and with
forty-five exhibits hosted in a tent outside the hall. The classes
for the event are being held across the street, in the Civic Center
Auditorium…”
“My focus, though, was on finding Linux, per se, at the
show. Of course, we report on pretty much all free and open source
software, but the goal of this particular trip was to take a look
at the very beginning of what we have predicted to be an explosion
of Linux in the embedded systems market. Listening to random
conversations as I crossed the show floor, there are a lot of
people in this field who are familiar with or who have worked with
Linux already, for a specific project or in a niche market.
However, right now we are starting to see the emergence of
companies built around Linux and embedded systems…”
“I got the opportunity to talk to people from all three
companies today, Michael Tiemann from Cygnus, Lyle Ball and Tim
Bird from Linneo and Jim Ready, from Montavista. They are all
extremely excited! If you take a look at each company in turn, it
is clear that the embedded systems market is so large that they
aren’t really in direct competition with each other right now.”