eclipse-threadx/threadx

Eclipse ThreadX (formerly Microsoft Azure RTOS/Express Logic) is a gold-standard infrastructure project. Its defensibility stems from two primary moats: deep hardware portability (supporting almost every major MCU architecture) and rigorous safety certifications (IEC 61508 SIL 4, ISO 26262 ASIL D, etc.). These certifications are prohibitively expensive and time-consuming to obtain, making it an 'un-displaceable' component for mission-critical industries like automotive, aerospace, and medical devices. While FreeRTOS (AWS) has wider market share in general IoT and Zephyr (Linux Foundation) has massive vendor momentum, ThreadX occupies a high-reliability niche. The move to the Eclipse Foundation recently ensures vendor neutrality, reducing the risk of Microsoft platform lock-in. Frontier labs pose almost zero risk as they operate at the opposite end of the compute spectrum (LLMs/Cloud vs. bare-metal determinism). The primary risk is market consolidation toward Zephyr for non-safety-critical projects, but ThreadX's legacy footprint and certified status provide a 3-5 year buffer even in a declining market scenario.