Today marks the 10th anniversary of the articles of incorporation of the company who arguably started the real-time embedded Linux movement, MontaVista Software.  Jim Ready and a small band of hopefuls saw that Linux was a suitable operating system for an embedded environment, and over the years have contributed thousands of lines and many thousands of hours to make Linux real-time, small, and fast.  From the first release of the Hard Hat Linux distribution to current editions, MontaVista has provided an excellent real-time system that has succeeded in revolutionizing the embedded systems industry.

Full disclosure:  I work for MontaVista.  In the past, I also worked for MontaVista partners, ISVs, and, yes, competitors.  I really like it here.