----- Original Message ----- From: Jane Andreas Sent: 06/06/11 09:14 AM To: Rafael Ignacio Zurita, English Qi Hardware mailing list - support, developers, use cases and fun Subject: Re: CPU loyalty?
----- Original Message ----- From: Rafael Ignacio Zurita Sent: 06/06/11 05:54 AM To: English Qi Hardware mailing list - support, developers, use cases and fun Subject: Re: CPU loyalty? On Mon, Jun 06, 2011 at 10:15:57AM +0200, Sebastien Bourdeauducq wrote: > On Mon, 2011-06-06 at 07:42 +0000, Jane Andreas wrote: > > It seems as though right now, MIPS is the most Free cpu if it meets > > the stringent RMS standards. > > There are no RMS standards whatsoever on CPUs, he doesn't want to know > anything about how they work. In fact, MIPS is a very poor choice wrt > open source hardware, as it is full of patents that get strongly > enforced. When there was no Linux, a lot of people was using the GNU shell, tools and compilers in propietary OS, like SUnOS. They surely liked the idea to use just a free software OS, but they did not do. And, surely, there were some options to use (maybe minix?, dont know the license of that at that time), or surely they had the enough skills to adapt the GNU tools to some basic free OS/kernel. But they did not do until Linux (they=most of people who liked the free software OS idea), because surely they did not like to use a basic OS/kernel with few features (well, Linux was that at the beggining, but it worked on PC which helped to get developers). Maybe now there is a similar situation with open hardware and cpu choosed. I do not know about hardware so much, but I was thinking on that analogy with software before 90' and I guessed that the current situation could be similar with hardware. And MIPS in nn was not choosed either IIRC, it was there on the old dictionary. Rafa So it seems to me it is more of a "just happened to work" decision than a "we as qi-hardware stand behind and support the product." It's shocking to hear that MIPS has patents, I would think that disqualifies it from the copyleft definition. So all that being said, is it possible that the Ya Nanonote will not use a MIPS CPU at all? Or is that pretty much set in place? I have not heard of many architectures, but maybe there is a better one? I trust though that Qi-hardware has prbably done way more research than I have. Maybe there will never be a perfect cpu for free as in freedom usage. In that case, it would be useless to want one...
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