Wind River Systems Inc., which makes proprietary embedded operating systems and development tools for creating embedded applications, has joined two open-source consortia.

Wind River, of Alameda, Calif., last week announced it has joined the Eclipse Consortium and the Open Source Development Lab. The Eclipse Consortium, of Raleigh, N.C., is the open-source tools platform sponsored by IBM to promote the standardization of embedded development around the Eclipse framework.

Michel Genard, general manager and senior director of hardware-assisted and stand-alone tools at Wind River, said: "We've been watching Eclipse from the beginning and only recently realized it is a very strong, very solid technology for us to take on and to enhance it and develop new products that will be Eclipse-ready."

In February, Wind River will be one of the sponsors of EclipseCon, a conference focusing on the Eclipse platform and related technologies that will take place in Anaheim, Calif.

Wind River targets five primary markets: aerospace and defense, automotive, digital consumer, industrial, and network infrastructure.

It is partly the company's interest in network infrastructure that prompted Wind River to join the OSDL, of Beaverton, Ore. OSDL is a consortium of users and technology suppliers working to promote the use of Linux, particularly Carrier Grade Linux. Wind River will be a part of the OSDL Carrier Grade Linux Working Group, which is working to promote the use of Linux in the telecommunications and networking markets, Genard said.

Wind River sells a proprietary embedded operating system called VxWorks. However, as Linux becomes more popular in the embedded, telecommunications and networking worlds, Wind River has moved to support the open-source operating system.

"Over the last two years, Wind River has been quite vocal about Linux and the issue of licensing," Genard said. "We announced a product that allows you to debug the Linux OS."

In October, Wind River announced VisionProbe II, a tool for debugging embedded Linux.

This article was originally published on eWEEK.com.