May be a little dated, but here's my take on their strategy of eCos.
As most here know, Cygnus operates on the model of taking FSF managed GNU code, tuning it up, and selling support for it. One big part of their business model, is to port the GNU tool chain on to new Microprocessors. For this, they get paid by the Microprocessor vendors. The amount paid for a port is probably in the order of $0.5 to $1 million to support a full tool chain.
Today, Cygnus GNU is available on many, many, many CPUs. Perhaps so many, that Cygnus is running out of things to charge for. Further, it may be difficult to really keep a business going on charging support for free software (although some, like RedHat Software have succeeded in doing this for Linux).
So now, Cygnus needs to come up with new leverage to grow their business.
Scenario 1) One approach may be to build something new to take into Microprocessor vendors, to get funding for ports to new chips. Since the FSF doesn't have an embedded OS, and since Linux doesn't scale properly, they could have built eCos for this purpose. eCos could be ported to new CPUs, again at $1M a pop.
Secnario 2) A different way to look at it would be to see eCos as a way for Cygnus to take market share away from GreenHills, Diab, and other tool vendors, by offering an enticing (royalty free, open source) OS to the customer, and then charging to support it and its tools (GNU, of course). The gamble they'd be making here is that they need to get an increasingly accelerated rate of design wins to keep the ball rolling.
However, there seem to be contraditions, in that since they are distributing eCos as open-source-ware, that means the responibility of porting it would fall into the hands of the individual users. I don't know if 1) The fact that it's royalty free would justify this level of effort, and 2) Open-Source-Ware would inhibit a business model of charging $$$$ for porting to new CPUs.
Conclusion: Though I don't like it much from a moral point of view, from a business point of view I think Scenario 1 is a better short term business model for them to follow, while testing the waters and seeding the market for Scenario 2 for a longe term perspective.
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