Comment by jacquesm
7 hours ago
Oh! I only worked with it commercially prior to that so I never got the memo. What an insanely stupid move. That was one of their USPs.
In general QnX was commercially mismanaged and technically excellent. I'm imagining a world where they clued in early on that an open source real time OS would have run circles around the rest of the offerings and they'd have cleaned up on commercial licensing. Since the 80's they've steadily lost mind and marketshare though I suspect they'll always be around in some form.
There's been talk about this on Reddit too, where our chief architect of QNX 8 broke down the decision. He mentioned it was ultimately a tough decision, but that in the end the cons outweighed the pros.
Such decisions should always involve the customers. A chief architect that knocks one of the foundation stones out from under a building isn't doing the bureau they work for any favors.