June 13, 2012

Dear Embedded Hardware Manufacturers,

We are embedded Linux developers. This is 2012. What gives?

It’s time embedded hardware manufacturers get with the times. You may be able to fool the suits but you haven’t convinced us. That is, you haven’t convinced us that your semi-walled garden is the way to go. Yes, you offer Linux support in your BSP. But that is no longer enough. You see, we have gotten use to Googling for answers, asking for help on IRC and seeking advice from peers via email. Dial-in support numbers are useless and “live” chats from your website make us feel ill.

We’re tired of hacky build systems that only support your platforms. What does it say about your “Linux support” if your patches aren’t good enough for mainline?

We build our own kernels straight from kernel.org. Support for your platform should be there. We run OpenWRT on our own routers at home. Your platform should be there when I type make menuconfig. If you have “secret sauce” that makes your platform better than the competitors, it better be easy to build, integrate, and use.

In short if you want us to recommend you and your platform to the suits…

Sincerely,

Embedded Linux Developers