It was 8th May of 2004 when I did first push to OpenEmbedded repository. It was BitKeeper at that time but if someone wants to look then commit can be seen in git.
I will not write about my OE history as there are several posts about it on my blog already:
- It is 10 years of Linux on ARM for me
- Five years with OpenEmbedded
- 3 years of OpenEmbedded and me
- 30 months of OpenEmbedded and me
- Year with OpenEmbedded
It was nice to be there through all those years to see how it grows. From a tool used by bunch of open source lovers who wanted to build stuff for own toys/devices, to a tool used by more and more companies. First ones like OpenedHand, Vernier. Then SoC vendors started to appear: Atmel, Texas Instruments and more. New architectures were added. New rewrites, updates (tons of those).
Speaking of updates… According to statistics from Ohloh.net I am still in top 5 contributors in OpenEmbedded and Yocto project ;)
There were commercial devices on a market with OpenEmbedded derived distributions running on them. I wonder how many Palm Pre users knew that they can build extra packages with OE. And that work was not lost — LG Electronics uses WebOS on their current TV sets and switched whole development team to use OpenEmbedded.
Since 2006 we got annual meetings and this year we have two of them: European as usual and North America one for first time (there was one few years ago during ELC but I do not remember was it official).
There is OpenEmbedded e.V. which is non-profit organization to take care of OE finances and infrastructure. I was one step from being one of its founders but birth of my daughter was more important ;)
And of course there is the Yocto project. Born from OpenedHand’s Poky helped to bring order into OpenEmbedded. Layers (which were discussed since 2006 at least) were created and enforced so recipes are better organized than it was before. It also helped with visibility. Note that when I write OpenEmbedded I mean OpenEmbedded and Yocto project as they are connected.
I remember days when Montavista was seen as kind of competitor (“kind of” because they were big and expensive while we were just a bunch of guys). Then they moved to OpenEmbedded and dropped own tools. Other company with such switch was Denx. 3 years ago they released ELDK 5.0 which was OE based and made several releases since then.
What future will bring? No idea but it will be bright. And I will still be somewhere nearby.