Quote:
Originally Posted by Gorf
Probably... but no-one said otherwise. It just makes still sense for these companies to develop operating systems - despite of the global Windows(desktop) and Linux(mobile+server) duopol.
eComStation/ArcaOS and QNX still earn money the traditional way....
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These cases you mention are kind of far fetched:
eComStation has failed in driving a healthy business selling the OS alone, and its user base is continually shrinking despite running on commodity hardware (aka PCs). Revenue was so poor that now it became ArcaOS, which is still a 32 bit OS/2 Warp 4.52 + some drivers and open source components. And the future still looks dim, as it has certainly become a niche dying OS (I cant help but love it anyway!). So it is not a good example of a thriving commercial OS.
And QNX lived well thanks to Blackberry in the early 2000´s and some hardware manufacturers that still support it. But long gone are the days of having a nearly captive embedded market and as a cool desktop solution (remeber the qnx4demo floppy image?), as there are quite a lot of cheaper and better supported alternatives nowadays. So, unless the scenario changes, it is still another dying OS, this one is just dying a more slower death.
So the writing is on the wall for both of them. They are not healthy business examples, they are leftovers of a great past, now inevitably dying despite their coolness factor.