***Disclaimer***: I work for Intel, but do not speak for them in any regard whatsoever. I also don't work with/for the IA64 group.
> I readily concede that my concerns were hypothetical, but what else could > they be? I suppose that promising not to reverse engineer the BIOS and > motherboard controller firmware is not likely to lead to an egregious > problem, but my point is that you never know. I have a great deal of > respect for Chris DiBona, and I would credit his views on this as > deserving of great weight. On the other hand, I also recall Intel pulling > the "Appendix H" stunt some years ago, and that makes me, personally, > uncomfortable about whether they "get" the Open Source concept. Have you seen http://developer.intel.com/design/ia-64/downloads/245473.htm ? It's interesting to note that TurboLinux and RedHat both have IA64 distributions out. There are public mailing lists where a lot of porting and kernel issues are discussed. The IA64 Linux kernel and compilers are open source (the Cygnus one anyway). For "porting" Debian to IA64, most of the work will involve recompiling and twaking existing GPL software. Intel has no way (or reason, really) to restrict what you do. randolph -- Debian Developer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.TauSq.org/
