Re: fsf/chips

[Yann Guidon <whygee@f-cpu.org>]

things i should add to the f-cpu licence
(while i still have it in the head) :
- file format openness : no proprietary format.
should be recommended by the W3C or standardized
by the IEEE or ISO/ANSI.

what would be the point of a "free design" if
you can't read the files that the people distribute ?
it would be a weak point of the licencing system
and the GFDL takes this into account too.

ok now, back to the answer :

Jamil Khatib wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I read teh hardware Design Public license version 0.04
> by Graham. Here are my comments
i don't think that i have read it.

> 1. It does not cover all the needs of all open
> hardware projects.
what things are missing ?

> 2. In Clause 1: "The HDPL covers all files included in
> the hardware design" but what about teh design itself?
> Assume that I downloaded the F-CPU manual and coded
> everthing in VHDL, compile it and then put it on
> Silicon who is going to stop me if I sell the chip as
> my own chip?

IIRC the GPL-like licences are based on copyright laws
which do not apply to designs, but representations thereof.
you would need a patent otherwise but it's expensive,
limited, slow,can be bypassed ... you know the rest.

> 3. In Clause 3 you did not differentiate between the
> the derived work and based work.
> 
> Derived work: when you take the design and modify it
> or add to it, something like adding an extra
> instruction to the F-CPU
> 
> work based on teh design: when you take the design as
> is. like using the F-CPU in a new parallel CPUs core
> that uses multiple F-CPUs and connect them on a single
> bus without any changes on the F-CPU.

i still don't see the problem. Can you elaborate ?

> 4. The idea of protecting the bitstreem files and
> programming files is not so clear for me

can you rephrase this ? it's not clear to me either :-)

> 5. yet there is no restriction on the implementation
> of the design

should there be any restriction ?

> 6. For me I see it as another GPL copyright license
> that is targeted to the <hardware design files>

well, the GPL does not apply perfectly verbatim
to HW design files. it fills a gap, but not completely.

> Regards
read you soon,
> Jamil Khatib
WHYGEE
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