I am not 100% sure about what I am going to say here, so don't quote me on anything. And please correct me if anyone think otherwise.
I believe that NCI (the former name of Liberate) was created by Netscape and Oracle to realize the concept of using Network Computer, a cheap desktop with no hard disk, limited memory resource, and a very fast Ethernet connection, for the corporate desk-tops. The idea was that such a thin PC will be cheap to make. And more importantly, a lot of the execution will be done on the server side, and the client is more like a high quality terminal. This, if works out, would certainly benefited Oracle, a data base maker, and Netscape, a client side display software maker. But the CPU/memory/disk-driver war in the last few years has created the sub-$1000 PC market, which defeats the cost benefit of NC. And I don't think that people liked the idea of a "cheap" PC at work.
A couple years ago, Allann Benn pointed out that NCI should focus on the consumer market rather than the corporate market. Somehow, this message got crossed into Larry Ellison's head. So NCI changed its whole direction to the home set-top market. With the AOL acquisition of Netscape, you can bet that NCI's software will be used on top of AOL's set-tops. Earlier this year, NCI went for a round of private offering. I believe there were 12 or 11 companies who bought into NCI. The list included some cable operators and Wind River System.
Unlike the other 10 or 11 investors in NCI, WRS has had a long work relationship with NCI. NCI ported the Navio (spell??) Browser to VxWorks, which the source code was bought by WRS later. And NCI's set-top platform was build on top of VxWorks. (I am not sure if NCI supports other RTOS such as pSOS, but I think VxWorks is the default OS.) To say the least, there are a lot more activities between the two companies than any news release may have revealed.
This is all I know.
Khan |
