Roadblocks to further widespread adoption of NetBSD in embedded systems (at least in my neck of the woods)

[Jack Atkinson <doxalogos%gmail.com@localhost>]

Greetings NetBSD developers,

This is my first time posting here, so go easy on me.  The past few 
years, my former employer and now client, has been going through a 
struggle of how best to move from their proprietary OS/RTOS to a 
commercial OS.  I've helped with a lot of research in this issue.  The 
two biggest contenders at the moment are Linux and QNX.  QNX is the 
strong favorite, but negotiations are not going well of late.  A lot 
people dread the Linux GPL, but love the plentiful driver support out 
there for most of our processors (mainly PowerQuic I & PowerQuicc Pro 
with some MIPS) and other peripherals currently on existing hardware.

I personally like what I see of the overall design of the NetBSD kernel 
and the build system.  The few times I've dipped into the source, I have 
been impressed with the layout and organization of it.  I prefer the BSD 
license over GPL, because BSD really is a free license in every meaning 
of the word free.  However, I cannot recommend NetBSD to them at this 
time, because of these areas that are lacking:

(listed by highest priority)
1. Official PowerQuicc support in the NetBSD tree along with drivers for 
CPM module.  (PowerPC is not quite the same, but a good starting point)
2. No flash support for NOR flash (NAND lacking is well, but NOR is more 
important for this company based on current deployed hardware)
3.  Better remote debugging over ethernet (kernel included).  I may be 
wrong on this, but I haven't seen a lot of info on how to do this for 
NetBSD.
4. Ability to build a small kernel with small subset of userland 
utilities much like BusyBox on Linux, but not GPL.
5. Better real time support (it's getting there by 6.0 and technically 
really a low priority due to more control plane software development the 
company does)


I say this not to complain, but maybe to help point out these major 
issues from another company's perspective. If the above areas had full 
support in the tree, I could almost guarantee it would become adopted.  
I want to encourage the embedded side of the NetBSD community to commit 
to these areas more. Personally, I hope to contribute to one of these 
areas in my own spare time, particularly in the PowerQuicc area (ref 
boards and debuggers are expensive!).

If my research is wrong on anything of this, please enlighten me!

Thanks,
J. Atkinson