Red Hat has axed its "other" operating system eCos, which formerly belonged to Cygnus, and there's an analysis of why at Rick Lehrbaum's LinuxDevices site.

Scooter actually scooped this here for CNET, but as is the way with CNET scoops, it was buried in Paragraph 13, and so no one noticed.

CNET reported that Red Hat had laid off its eCos development team in England and cancelled the project .

And I didn't notice, because on doctor's orders, I'm instructed not to read CNET in case I catch sight of headlines like this, [or this] which bring me out in a rash and which in extreme cases can cause temporary loss of vision, nausea and vomiting.

Red Hat's Michael Tiemann explains:-

"If Linux is truly going to revolutionize the embedded systems market, it's going to do so on its own terms, and the embedded systems market needs to adapt to those terms, not the other way around."

A remark overloaded with importance, as anyone who's followed the RTLinux patent dispute will know. But it also suggests that eCos won't be returning anytime soon.

However, eCos lives on in the marketing afterlife: there's no announcement in the Bereavement Column yet, it's still hanging around like a ghost in Red Hat's 'Embedded Glossary', too.

Bootnote: "Should I lie with death my bride?" The eCos announcement was made by Red Hat's COO, one Tim Buckley. Here's a spine chilling video of Tim Buckley singing Song To The Siren on The Monkees' TV Show. Pleeeease don't all hit this link at once, dear readers] ®

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