ThreadX status and future

[TDJ]

Hi All,

Not so long ago ST has selected Microsoft ThreadX as one of its its strategic technologies.
In my opinion it is a very good RTOS. The problem is that it was supported by Microsoft only, no other community project integrates with it, e.g. mcuboot etc. It is almost like ThreadX does not exist.
Now, Microsoft ThreadX is Eclipse-ThreadX. It is open-source, MIT licensed but last Github commit was made 6 months ago. The latest version is 6.4.1 while ST is still stacked with version 6.2.0.

No significant ST 's commitment is visible. It does not look good - regretfully, I need to say.

Am I missing something?

I need to decide whether I should use it in my project or abandon while I still have a choice.

[liaifat85]

If your project has a long timeline and requires extensive community support and ecosystem integration, it will be wise to consider alternatives like FreeRTOS or Zephyr.

[TDJ]

@liaifat85 That is what I start to think. There are no signs ST wants to pick this ball up, probably eventually ST will drop ThreadX and go back to FreeRTOS or switch to Zephyr, unless something more exotic will gain sympathy of some VP detached from reality.

[Pavel A.]

Unfortunately this is "the Microsoft Way". Most of their affairs with acquired projects or companies... Anybody remembers what they did with Nokia? Skype?  Now their darling is Rust. 

So the status: free cheese is not forever. Future: expect more hard work.

[TDJ]

@Pavel A. Particularly painful was how Microsoft cancelled Silverlight after when Miguel de Icaza demonstrated Mono/Moonlight on Android. Ofc, the official reason was different but I know for certain. I lost startup company, more than a year of work and considerable money and will never trust them again.

[Pavel A.]

@TDJ Yes there were the times. Churn and huge waste of resources is unavoidable in this industry. Been in the WiMax project. But guess what - my current job is "powered by" Microsoft ))

[BarryWhit]

You will find plenty of dysfunction on the zephyr repo as well. and there's the epic malloc bug saga for FreeRTOS that took place on this forum, and is still in a murky state. 

 

No free lunch.

[TDJ]

@BarryWhit This is why I hesitate. ThreadX appears to be stable, well-thought, consistent, well tested and well certified. I mean, quite solid piece of software. Too bad probably it is going to be abandoned.
I am on the fence and ST is silent.

[Tesla DeLorean]

ST isn't making a contractual commitment to ANY of this. You get to own your own decisions and choices.

Microsoft is a sh**ty partner, have been for decades, I wouldn't tie any of my business to them, ever.

Provided there's not bit rot, there's no reason you can't adopt a current release, and maintain and patch that yourself. We're not building Adobe Flash

[TDJ]

@Tesla DeLorean Exactly, ThreadX is no longer Microsoft and it is MIT licensed.
RTOS does not need to be the best. I do not work for SpaceX (yet). It just needs to be good enough.
Thank you for your input.

[TDJ]

One more thought. The problem with ST, as I see it, is that as much as possible it tries to remain hardware company and maintain very minimum software it exclusively owns like CubeXX, TouchGFX etc. In some ways, maturity-wise ST is where Microsoft used to be during Steve Ballmer era.
The same time competition truly engages in community projects like mcuboot, trustedfirmware or lvgl where ST's presence is at best only pretended. ThreadX seems to fall into this pattern. Probably it was selected in the first place mainly because competitors could not offer it free. Since solutions we build consist of both hardware and software and time-to-market matters a lot, ST, although makes excellent hardware, to me by no means is a clear winner because competitors provide much more help with software.

[Pavel A.]

> because competitors provide much more help with software.

Really?

[Andrew Neil]

It's all just 3rd-party software - you don't have to rely on ST for any of it ...

[Pavel A.]

@Andrew Neil Developing for graphic hardware depends on support and documentation of the vendor. For example new graphic controllers of H5 and U5 (?).  Even situation with USB and Ethernet is far from great (well, 3rd party IPs...). But are competitors much better?

[Andrew Neil]

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@Pavel A. wrote:

 are competitors much better?

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I think not.

[TDJ]

@Andrew Neil, @Pavel A. That depends on a particular area, project and expectations but if competitors were much butter, I would not be here and ST board would hold emergency meetings because of stocks falling down sharply. But I am neither ST VP nor stake holder and as an engineer I often have reasons to be unhappy. ThreadX uncertain future and U5 GPU2D docs are just two of them.