“The chances are that TiVo customers will care onlythat the
TiVo box works and records what they want. And that’s fine with Jim
Barton, TiVo’s chief technology officer, For him, it’s what’s
inside TiVo that matters. And what’s inside of TiVo is
Linux.“
“What we needed is something that was not simple technology,”
Barton said. “With Linux, the source code was free and we could do
all our own development.”
“While Linux is best known for its uses in the server market,
the so-called open source operating system – available for free to
anyone – quietly is building another beachhead among information
appliances. These devices include everything from the TiVo product
to microwave ovens that can download product-repair data from the
Internet, and represent a potentially lucrative market for the
makers of whatever operating software their producers decide to
use.”