about eCos

The Embedded Configurable Operating System (eCos) is a free and open source real-time operating system intended forembedded systems and applications which need only one process with multiple threads.
It is designed to be customizable to precise application requirements of run-time performance and hardware needs. It is implemented in C/C++ and has compatibility layers andapplication programming interfaces for POSIX and µITRON.

Design

eCos was designed for devices with memory sizes in the range of a few tens or several hundred kilobytes, or for applications with real-time requirements. It can be used on hardware with less than 2 MiB RAM, which is the minimum requirement to support embedded Linux.

eCos runs on a wide variety of hardware platforms, including ARM, CalmRISC, FR-V, Hitachi H8, IA-32, Motorola 68000, Matsushita AM3x, MIPS, NEC V8xx, Nios II, PowerPC, SPARC, and SuperH.

The eCos distribution includes RedBoot, an open source application that uses the eCos hardware abstraction layer to providebootstrap firmware for embedded systems.

History

eCos was initially developed in 1997 by Cygnus Solutions which was later bought by Red Hat. In early 2002, Red Hat ceased development of eCos and laid off the staff of the project. Many of the laid-off staff continued to work on eCos and some formed their own companies providing services for the software. In January 2004, at the request of the eCos developers, Red Hat agreed to transfer the eCos copyrights to the Free Software Foundation in October 2005, a process finally completed in May 2008.

Non-free versions

The eCosPro real-time operating system is a commercial fork of eCos created by eCosCentric which incorporates proprietary software components. It is claimed as a "stable, fully tested, certified and supported version", with additional features that are not released as free software.

Criticisms

The FreeBSD TCP/IP network stack included with eCos is out of date (circa 2001) and exposes systems to numerous security and stability vulnerabilities (FreeBSD RELENG 4 4 0 RELEASE for IPv4 and FreeBSD's origin KAME for IPv6). Official eCos maintainers do not appear to monitor FreeBSD or KAME for security or stability updates, but rather rely on minimal and insufficient bug reports from users of eCos.

The SNMP package is rudimentary at best, once again, apparently due to its age.