BlackBerry’s QNX operating system is now free for non-commercial use

The last time I spent much time thinking about the QNX operating system was when Lee spent a few weeks in 2011 figuring out how to root a BlackBerry PlayBook tablet running the QNX-based PlayBook OS, sideload Android apps onto the tablet, and even load the Google Android Market (which was the predecessor to the Google Play Store).

But QNX has actually been around for more than four decades. It’s a Unix-like real-time, microkernel-based operating system that’s most widely used these days in automotive systems – more than 200 million cars run QNX-based software. While QNX has had several different owners over the years, BlackBerry has owned it since 2010. And now BlackBerry has announced that QNX is free for non-commercial use and released a QNX 8.0 image that runs on Raspberry Pi 4 computers. It’s part of a QNX Everywhere aimed at expanding the reach of QNX and attracting developers to the platform.

It’s worth noting that BlackBerry is not open sourcing QNX and right now the software isn’t really designed to be a user-friendly desktop or mobile operating system. But it has supported that kind of use in the past.

Skimming a Hacker News submission about QNX Everywhere shows a fair amount of skepticism from folks who feel that QNX has pulled the rug out from under developers in the past. While QNX has never been a fully open source operating system, the platform has been more open for development in the past, even releasing some source code. And, as OSNews notes, two decades ago there was an active community of QNX desktop developers who created a graphical user interface and ported open source software like Firefox and Thunderbird to run on the platform.

But QNX later shifted course and closed up its operating system, effectively killing the independent developer community. It’s possible that this latest effort could revive or create a new community of developers and hobbyists. Those with a long memory might be wary of getting burnt again though.

That’s not really the point of QNX Everywhere though. It’s more about building a developer community interested in working on embedded systems like the automotive and healthcare products that currently run QNX.

via Hackster.io

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