Hi all,

I am a Japanese programmer, who happens to talk to overseas business
partners a lot.

It came to my attention during my talk with a programmer in Malaysia
that not many people outside Japan (except for a few countries) are
aware that a full source of realtime kernel source (sans bootstrap
code) is
available from a Japanese site for free.

The NPO's main page is
http://www.t-engine.org/

The download page is:
http://www.t-engine.org/T-Kernel/tkernel_e.html

Both pages are written in English, by the way.

T-Kernel is a fully featured embedded realtime OS kernel and is meant
for 32bit CPU's with MMU.
u (micro) T-Kernel is meant for CPUs without MMU (and can run on 16-
bit microprocessor, I think.)

You pick up which source code  you want and then after agreeing to the
license,
the NPO will sends back a login information so that you can download
the code.

The code is for free, there is no royalty payment attached, and except
for a
restriction that you are not allowed to distribute the modified source
to a third party (READ the T-LICENSE
posted in the above site), you can do whatever you want. Again, please
READ the LICENSE for details.

A few notes: The web page uses "Subscription" for downloading the
source file.
I think it is a carried over from the day when the lawyer who
translated the initial license thought that the
making the source code available is like a subscription to a magazine,
i.e., the publisher making the
magazine available to subscribed readers.
If this choice of the word puts the potential users off, too bad. I
will mention the mischoice of the word to the
NPO.

So basically, if say, you try to download the T-Kernel source code,
you choose the
"Subscription to T-Kernel source" link,

http://www.t-engine.org/T-Kernel/tkinfo_e.html

and directed to a listing of T-License, and then after agreeing with
the license, you press
"Agreement" button, which leads you to  a page that asks you whether
you are
applying as an individual or a corporate entity.

There you need to press, again, buttons marked with
"Individual Contract" or "Corporate Contract", both are somewhat
misnomer
because when you press them, you are merely asked to fill in contact
information and only fill in these you will
finally push a button that gets the application registered with NPO's
office and the office will send back the
e-mail with URL link to download the source file.

I am told this process is to make sure that you READ T-License BEFORE
obtaining the source code.

You can see that NPO's member list contains big names in consumer
electronics companies, etc..

List of names.
http://www.t-engine.org/english/member.html

I am posting this to try to see if people whio read this newsgroup are
aware of the availability, and if not, I hope more people will try the
available source code out.

I am related to the NPO in that the company I work for is a member of
NPO, but since the source code is made available for free, I have no
monetary gain if the readers will download and use it for their work.

Last week, I was saddened to hear that the programming team's leader
from Malaysia I met in London
didn't know the existence
of such free source for embedded realtime OS.
He had many right questions about embedded OS kernel, to which I could
answer "Yes!" thankfully.
He now has one more choice in the selection of realtime OS for his
products (provided, of course, that
T-Kernel or uT-Kernel is ported to his cpu board in time.)
The NPO has tried to make the source code available for free in good
faith to promote embedded system industry, and it is a pity if it is
not getting to the right audience.

This is purely a non-commercial promotion.

TIA

PS: There is a third party site that explains some details from the
third party's point of view somewhat

http://t-engine.onghu.com/te