eCos
More info
- Creator
- Cygnus Solutions
- Released
- 1997
- Type
- RTOS
- License
- GPL with linking exception
Embedded Configurable Operating System: an open RTOS where you tick boxes at build time for exactly which parts of the kernel get included.
Cygnus Solutions, the company that sold support for the GNU toolchain, released eCos in 1997 as a free alternative to royalty-bearing RTOSes. Its configuration tool let developers pick schedulers, drivers and even individual features, and anything left unticked was compiled out entirely.
Red Hat bought Cygnus in 1999 and wound down its eCos effort a few years later; development carried on through eCosCentric and the community. Its most durable legacy may be RedBoot, a bootloader built on eCos that lived inside countless routers and network boxes through the 2000s. The licence was GPL with a linking exception, so proprietary firmware could stay closed.