Intel had profited tens to hundreds of millions of dollars from Minix 3. Minix replaced ThreadX (also used as the Raspberry Pi firmware) running on ARC RISC cores. Intel had to pay for both.
If Intel reinvested 0.01% of what it saved by taking Minix for free, Minix 3 would be a well-funded community project that could be making real progress.
It already runs much of the NetBSD userland. It needs stable working SMP and multithreading to compete with NetBSD itself. (Setting aside the portability.)
But Intel doesn't need that. And it doesn't need to pay. So it doesn't.
https://www.osnews.com/story/136174/minix-is-dead/
Intel had profited tens to hundreds of millions of dollars from Minix 3. Minix replaced ThreadX (also used as the Raspberry Pi firmware) running on ARC RISC cores. Intel had to pay for both.
If Intel reinvested 0.01% of what it saved by taking Minix for free, Minix 3 would be a well-funded community project that could be making real progress.
It already runs much of the NetBSD userland. It needs stable working SMP and multithreading to compete with NetBSD itself. (Setting aside the portability.)
But Intel doesn't need that. And it doesn't need to pay. So it doesn't.