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7 years, 12 months ago.
I am unclear about this cloud rubbish it scares me off
To us old timers cloud just means someone else's computer. So I don't want that thanks . I see that I can run this server product on my own hardware for free up to 100 devices.
I can't see upfront what the licence costs would be for more than that I smell a rat.
I am not a free software puritan and I did make the mistake of using the term open source whilst talking to Richard stallman but I do want control of my own work and will not invest a load of time in some locked platform.
Am I wrong about this?
1 Answer
7 years, 12 months ago.
Yes you are wrong, in a way. Mbed has been going since around 2010 and uses the Keil compiler. Free to use and very unlikely it will disappear but there is no guarantee with anything these days. Works on slow internet connections, compiling is done on their servers that are extremely fast and has been very reliable apart from a few problems when they update things. You can keep your code private and export and use other offline complier/IDE's. Get a board for a few quid and have a try for yourself.
Great answer Paul. We're working hard to lessen the problems when updating things and making the online offline experience better than it has ever been!
posted by 06 May 2016I can see how this answer refers to the production of code compialng on someone else's server. That is not my concern. I can see that I can run this client and there is no licence fee for that but if these clients send the data to a server and if I want to run my own server with more than 100 clients I have to pay that's what it says it just does not say how much I have to pay. I want to get the commercial limitation clarified before anything else .
posted by 06 May 2016John would you mind posting a link to this "server product", so we can see for ourselves.
Edit: I presume it is this: https://connector.mbed.com/ and on that basis I'm inclined to agree, I'd want to know more before committing to it.
posted by 07 May 2016
Since I can't make an answer anymore: That whole server thing is unrelated to the rest of mbed (pretty much at least for now). The compiler is completely free for personal and commercial use. But you have no SLA or anything like it with ARM, so you are in my opinion pretty stupid if you have not at least a plan B if it is important for you (such as in a company where you product depends on it), so a local backup and the options to compile it locally at least.
The code you make will never be locked somehow, while the compiler for example is closed source, the mbed libraries are open source, they can of course stop supporting them, but they can never make your current code stop working (they can pull the plug from the online compiler obviously). And why they would offer this for 'free'? They still get license income from every ARM equipped device sold ;).
posted by Erik - 07 May 2016