If Peter says this is a good move, then it is a good move. TI's support of open source, and msp430 open source in particular, has been a mixed bag - but this looks like a clear and positive move. Of all the companies TI could have partnered with here, Red Hat is definitely a good choice with a strong record of making good tools, and working openly with the community.
When a basically proprietary company like TI "takes over" an open source project, it is always a cause for some concern - will they try to close off all or part of the development effort, and perhaps move towards turning the zero-cost tools into "commercial open source". (It is fair enough paying for extras over and above the open source toolsets, including support - but it is /not/ fair for a commercial company to take volunteers' hard work, repackage it as "official" and then charge for it.) In some cases, the "official" maintaining company makes it hard for other developers and volunteers to work with them. In this case, I am not particularly afraid of this. For one thing, the actual development community around these tools is very small at the moment - it is close to a one-man show. The project is strongly in need of someone to work on aspects such as the debugger, and tidy some of the parts that have languished over the years. But sometimes conflicts do occur - it is important to draw lessons from similar projects such as gcc for the AVR which has an open source community and backing from Atmel. There are currently two "official" avr-gcc toolchains - the one from Atmel and the one from the FSF are not identical (though most changes and patches move across from one to the other eventually), and the two development groups are not always entirely in agreement. I would not be surprised to see Red Hat charging for development tools based on msp430 gcc - they already provide "GNUPro" packages for other targets. But as long as this is in addition to official free packages (distributed by Red Hat or TI), then such paid-for packages would be a good extra option for corporate customers who are looking for commercially packaged toolsets with a strong support base (and Red Hat is famous for its strong support). And of course, nothing provides respectability for a toolchain better than support (financially and publicly) by the manufacturer of the chips in question! A few things still concern me a little. One is that TI should go out of their way to recognise the enormous amount of hard work done by Peter Bigot and the previous mspgcc developers (such as Dmitry Diky, Chris Liechti, Steve Underwood, etc.). TI can never repay them for their work - but they /can/ make sure they are thanked for it. Another issue is that TI make and sell their own msp430 toolchain - Code Composer Studio. I would like to hear exactly how TI see CCS and gcc fitting together and/or competing. It is certainly possible for TI to support both toolchains, but it could be a delicate path to tread. Other than that, I wish all involved the best of luck with this move. I will be looking forward to trying out the tools when they are ready. David Brown On 26/10/12 11:33, Peter Bigot wrote: > On Fri, Oct 26, 2012 at 4:01 AM, Mitnacht, Thomas <t-mitna...@ti.com> > wrote: >> Hello GCC-enthusiasts! >> >> We wanted to give everyone in the MSPGCC community some exciting >> news regarding the MSP430(tm) MCU portfolio and its GCC offering. >> TI is collaborating with Red Hat to develop a new GCC offering that >> will incorporate as much as feasible of what the community has >> developed. The team at Texas Instruments cannot thank the community >> enough for all of the efforts involved in improving our GCC >> offering for MSP430 MCUs! With your help, TI has been able to grow >> closer to the open source community & GCC has become a key part of >> MSP430 MCU strategy. The MSP430 team looks forward to this new >> partnership to further improve our open source presence. We are >> working with Red Hat to create a new GCC offering for MSP430 MCUs >> and future platforms, with the ultimate goal of being upstreamed >> into the main FS > F GCC branch that is actively supported for the long-term. >> >> We are aiming to have a working beta before the end of the year, >> and are shooting for a public release sometime early next year. >> Stay tuned. >> >> The MSP430 Team > > As the sole maintainer of mspgcc and its component packages for the > last two years, I endorse this decision. > > I originally started contributing simply because I wanted an MSP430 > toolchain that supported the CC430 and that I could run on Linux > without paying $4K for the privilege of running an IDE under a > Windows emulator. I continued because I thought it needed doing, was > able to do it, and mostly enjoyed it. > > Today, I believe LTS-20120406 (gcc 4.6) and dev 20120911 (gcc 4.7 > with 20-bit MSP430 support) have both been demonstrated to be > remarkably stable, supporting the entire MSP430 product line > comprising over 350 MCUs. I have no plans for further enhancements > or releases of mspgcc. I will probably continue to provide patches > for any serious bugs that are reported until the new implementation > is available. I have also offered to be a resource to Red Hat and TI > to assist in preserving the existing capabilities and interfaces of > mspgcc to whatever degree is appropriate. > > However, a majority of my effort has been, well, unpaid (which is > NOT the intended meaning of "free software"). It's time to focus on > other things, such as http://pabigot.github.com/bsp430/ and other > infrastructure tools and environments associated with my consulting > business. I've taken mspgcc as far as I personally care to, and > look forward to somebody else taking responsibility for the next > steps. Somebody who has the necessary influence with the GCC core > developers to push for internal changes that will make supporting > such an unusual architecture simpler, the experience to implement the > reload optimizations that would help mspgcc generate more "atomic" > code, and the time and motivation to update gdb to support all the > CPUX enhancements that have been added to binutils. I believe the > open source MSP430 development community will benefit greatly from > the involvement of Red Hat with TI support. > > Peter > >> >> Texas Instruments Deutschland GmbH, Haggertystr. 1, D-85356 >> Freising. Amtsgericht M?nchen HRB 40960. Gesch?ftsf?hrer: Dr. >> Wolfram Tietscher. 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