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QNX Community FAQ

This FAQ answers questions frequently asked about the QNX Community and Foundry27. Have an unanswered question? Post it to the Community forum.

Foundry27

What is Foundry27?

Foundry27 provides the infrastructure for members of the QNX community to share source code and binaries, to support each other through their development experience, to suggest improvements, to develop software in a transparent manner in projects, and to promote technologies that support or leverage the QNX software platform.

Who is Foundry27 for?

Foundry27 is for anyone interested in developing software that runs on the QNX software platform or software that helps to create such applications.

What's coming?

Read the roadmap

What is the relationship between QNX and Foundry27?

QNX Software Systems (QSS) hosts the Foundry27 infrastructure and help manage the evolution of the ecosystem. The rights to the source and binaries found in the foundry's various projects may or may not belong to QSS. QSS is fully dedicated to produce its software in a transparent manner through Foundry27 projects. Over time, QSS expects that most of the technologies found in its products will be developed transparently within the foundry. As a proof of this commitment, QSS unveiled the source code of its crown jewel, the QNX Neutrino RTOS microkernel, in the QNX Operating System project.

Community

Who is the QNX Community?

See the Glossary

How do I use the portal?

Read the Portal Usage Guide

Why should I register to join the community?

Community registration grants access to a wider set of resources and enables interactions with the rest of the community. Details are available from the Community Members page.

How do I become a registered community member?

To become a registered community member you must setup a myQNX account. Click here or click on the "login" link in the upper right region of any foundry page and follow the instructions.

I want to access the source code, how can I?

As an anonymous user, you can only view the source code through the Web interface. To do so, access the desired project, select its 'Source Code' section, select the repository, select 'View Commits', then select 'Browse Repository'.

Registered members can access the Subversion repository using any Subversion client application. See the Bazaar directory's IDE plug-ins for clients you can integrate with the QNX Momentics IDE.

Philosophy

Is this open source?

Simple answer is 'no'. But the complete answer is 'sometimes' since each Foundry27 project is free to expose its technology under its sponsor's own licensing terms. As an example, some of the BSPs delivered as part of the BSPs and Drivers project are published under the terms of the Apache 2.0 license; these are clearly open source. The QSS components delivered as part of the QNX Operating System project can be considered very close to open within the QNX development community; their source is published, the binaries are available, the source code can be modified and even redistributed to other QSS licensed developers. More details are available at the Community Redistribution page at http://licensing.qnx.com/.

How does Foundry27 differ from conventional open source portals?

Foundry27 exhibits more commercial flexibility than its pure open source counterparts; it differs in many ways:

Projects in Foundry27 can elect to use any license their sponsor wishes to use for new source code, or that is consistent with any license for preexisting code. Projects developed within other open communities are generally restricted to open source licenses.
Binaries from the foundry can be offered under any arrangements with the project sponsors; including ones that involve monetary exchange. Binaries from typical open source communities have to be free of charge.
While QSS recognizes the benefits of diversity in the development of software in public projects, it does not view this requirement as an absolute one for a project's success. To that end, QSS doesn’t require multiple contributors or sponsors for any given project. However, QSS believes that a software ecosystem as a whole does requires diversity; hence Foundry27.

How does Foundry27 differ from conventional "developer zones" offered by various software vendors' corporate web site?

Such zones are generally limited to posting of SDK resources, "add-ons" listings and forums. Foundry27 is different since it hosts projects being developed transparently; source can be public, builds can be made available, defects can be tracked publicly, plans are public and forums enables direct access to developers.

QSS goes a thousand steps further than developer zones by leveraging the foundry to develop its own core commercial technologies transparently.

Why is QNX doing this?

Foundry27 is part of a larger effort by QSS to enable as many developers as possible to leverage its technologies. More QNX developers means more mind share for QNX technologies and more opportunities for the whole QNX community. QSS has seeded this effort by providing access to the full QNX Development Suite at no charge for non-commercial, educational, or partner use. For more information on the various licenses offered by QSS, visit the QNX Licensing page.

Projects

What is the license?

Depends on the project. A given project is free to license its new source and/or binaries under any licensing terms. The source and binaries offered by a project can in fact involve multiple licenses, some of which may be royalty bearing. The sole restriction that QSS will impose on new projects will be that their binaries be packaged per license. This will avoid QNX Community members from downloading binaries governed by an undesired mix of licenses. Licensing information will be clearly published on each project's home page.

What is the benefit of starting a project in this community?

Developing a project within the QNX community provides immediate access to your target audience; QNX technology partners are visible to QNX customers and to each other. Hobbyists can get support and feedback from other hobbyists, QNX customers and partners. Students can collaborate at school or within the QNX Community. Commercial developers will find that tracking a transparent project is a great way to get early access to a technology and to get and give feedback early in the development cycle.

How can I create a project?

As per the roadmap, we plan to publish in 3Q08 an official process for creating projects. In the meantime, you can propose projects by e-mailing the QNX Community Management Group (QCMG) .

How can I contribute to existing projects?

It depends on the project. Each project has its own policy regulating how external contributors can help. See the project's home page for details.

What are the characteristics of an ideal project?

One that:

Is sponsored by multiple entities
Offers published source and binaries
Is free for non-commercial use by the QNX development community
Leverages all portal resources available to the project

What are the minimum obligations in managing a project?

Manage the project home page
Offer regular drops of binaries being developed
Support a forum and/or defect tracker

I want to post some binaries but do not want to manage a project, what can I do?

The Bazaar project allows you to post source and/or binaries without having to support a forum or defect tracking.

What is the development process used in projects?

Every project is free to adopt the development process that best suits its needs. We plan to publish a model for the committer process and a supporting agreement in 3Q08 for anyone who wants to use it. In the meantime, here’s a list of some best practices that we recommend.

Successful projects:

generate at least one release per year aligned to releases of the QNX Operating System project
use an iterative development process with milestones
post regular builds
use a tracker system for every code and documentation change
post their plans for the current release and, ideally, a roadmap for multiple releases
limit committers - only project members can commit code changes
encourage community members to submit patches
allow project members to veto any fix and give them full responsibility to reject any submission with suspect IP
get members to keep logs of every patch committed and the corresponding contributor
allow the project sponsor(s) sole discretion over admitting new members
include members that aren’t sponsors
define the project specific committer agreement which outlines the rights to the code being submitted by the committers to the project

QNX Momentics

Why is the Community Project hosting QNX Momentics forums?

Because the QNX Momentics development suite is required for anyone developing software running on the QNX Operating System. The very nature of this community being to produce such software, supporting Momentics within the Community project make sense. As well, the components developed by many technology projects have dependencies on Momentics. e.g. To use milestone builds of the IDE project, you are required to install Momentics 6.3.2 first. This is because much of the IDE functionality relies on the command line tools and header files included with Momentics.

I am a commercial QNX Momentics user already, how does this portal help me?

Many of the technologies included in QNX Momentics are developed in Foundry27's technology projects. You can use the resources made available in these projects to learn more about these technologies, to communicate with the development team, and to download early builds of their next release subject to your subscription to maintenance and support. You can even help to resolve issues! :-)

I don't have access to QNX Momentics. Can I get a copy?

Definitely! QSS is making available for free a family of licenses based on your intended use. Visit the Download QNX Momentics page for more details.

What's the difference between community support and QSS's own support services?

Community support is provided by community member volunteers. They cannot make commitments to you that issues raised through community channels will get resolved. QSS's Standard and Priority support plans, on the other hand, provide a confidential and secure channel to raise issues, have them prioritized, tracked and resolved. The support agreement clearly sets expectations regarding the management of issues raised by customers. With the Priority support plans, QNX support representatives will be assigned and will get to know the customers' environment and will often have their target hardware in-house to help provide solutions to issues raised. For more details about QNX's Support and Services offerings, visit the QNX Support and Services Portal

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