There is also an idea of attaching the RP2350 to the "mainframe". Olimex GateMateA1-EVB has plenty of lines to organize the parallel interface to e.g. Raspberry Pi Pico 2.

Well, there's a plan in case BB doesn't re-license.

We will rewrite the proprietary parts of the kernel from scratch. It's not trivial, but possible.

We could use seL4 as a basis for the "core" message-passing primitives. Channels and connections will go next.

I've already done this. It's a thing one person can do in under a year.

"read-only type license" -- that's a bit too strong wording.

OTTAWA, September 12, 2007 — [...] QNX Software Systems today announced that it is opening access to the source code of its QNX® Neutrino® realtime operating system (RTOS) under a new hybrid software licensing arrangement.

Effective immediately, QNX will make source code for its [...] microkernel-based OS available for download. The first source release includes the code to the QNX Neutrino microkernel, the base C library, and a variety of board support packages (BSPs) for popular embedded and computing hardware.

Not only can developers view the QNX Neutrino source code, but they can improve, modify, or extend that code for their own purposes or for the QNX community at large.

Thanks, chrsw! I encourage people to join the petition to re-license old QNX sources under Apache 2.0. If Blackberry does so, we'll have another good and free microkernel-based OS.

I spent a ton of time on trying to do just that years ago and it went nowhere, calibrate your hopes accordingly.

I checked out and BB revenue report [1] "driven by upbeat strength across its QNX division" (quote). I think this will make more difficult to obtain a QNX license if they don't see it strategic?

[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/blackberry-q3-earnings-revenu...

BB is a very traditional company, they're very much stuck in the 90's when it comes to software licensing. There is a BB QnX team member here on HN they can probably shine much more light on this than I can (but I realize they may not be free to talk about it).