That was the title of the email that turned up in my mailbox this morning. I must have missed the news of the initial acquisition.
"Our customers stand to benefit the most from this move as both Mentor Embedded and CodeSourcery share a synergistic vision around our commitments to open source tools and technologies."
Maybe it's just my inherent distrust of people willing to unironically use the phase "synergistic vision", but I suddenly find myself pessimistic about the future of both the CS tools specifically and, given how much they were drivers behind embedded GCC, GCC in general.
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Rob Gaddi, Highland Technology
Email address is currently out of order
Time will tell. If they stray far enough away from the GCC model, someone else will follow their (old) lead and pick it up.
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Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com
Do you need to implement control loops in software?
"Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems" was written for you.
See details at http://www.wescottdesign.com/actfes/actfes.html
What makes you think gcc in general will suffer with that kind of "synergetic vision" between Mentor and CodeSourcery ?
So far gcc is GPL'ed so the code remains our own not under CS or even worse under restrictive Mentor licences.
Ironically, many technical managers in different companies complain about that kind of alliance (free software -- profit business) but they are not inclined to open they own code so far (arguing fact that using gcc does not implies you are in the obligation to open the code, ok ok ...)
Real question : gcc needs CS ? for my own CS Mentor we will see the future of CS ...
Actually, Mentor acquired CodeSourcery some time ago - and CodeSourcery has continued to release new versions of its tools, in all editions (free, low-cost, high-cost with support), and for different targets. And the CodeSourcery developers have continued to contribute to gcc.
For the CodeSourcery staff, this is probably a good thing - it will give them a more stable economy.
For Mentor, it must be a good deal - they've acquired some of the best talent in gcc and library coding, and can make sure that their gcc-based products (including all their embedded Linux stuff) have the best development team.
In combination, it means things like CodeSourcery support for Mentor's debugger hardware.
For CodeSourcery users, it may mean more Mentor branding in the toolchains (though I have seen no sign of that so far). But it's not going to be a big issue - after all, the code is almost all open source. Theoretically, it could also mean changes to the pricing models - but I think it's unlikely to cause big changes, due to competition from the likes of Code Red and free gcc packages.
As for how this will affect gcc development, it all depends on how far-sighted Mentor's management is. But as far as I understand it, the CodeSourcery group within Mentor is being run by Mark Mitchell, who ran CodeSourcery before and is a major name in gcc development. Maybe they'll get even more time to work on the coding now that Mentor can handle the non-technical aspects of running the company.
I don't have any worries about CodeSourcery or gcc with this news. And if the worst were to happen, gcc is all open source and could continue without the CodeSourcery people (though they'd be missed).
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