On 5/12/05, Jack Carroll <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > It's starting to sound like a choice between dual licensing and > trade secrets. Of course, the details are key. > > Here's another wrinkle. > Of course we understand that all outside contributions are under the > LGPL. However, an important motivating factor for contributors is that > their contributions are part of a fully functioning system. The best > example is the way open source development suddenly took off when the Linux > kernel was added to the GNU utilities and libraries, forming a usable > open-source OS for the first time. > This means that if a non-zero amount of proprietary or closed-source > code is necessary to complete the system and make the board work, the > motivation will be a lot stronger if there is some form of firm committment > to keeping that logic permanently available, even if the company goes out of > business or is taken over by new owners with different policies. > There are probably a number of ways this could be satisfied, but it > should not depend on good will alone. > If it's necessary to keep some of the code closed for a time, a copy > might be placed with a trustee, instructed to publish it on a certain date. > A bank might do as a trustee; safe deposit boxes are pretty economical. The > date of full open-source release might be set some years off; that should be > OK with contributing developers and embedded customers as long as it can't > be unilaterally extended. If we need to subscribe money to compensate the > company for an irrevocal commitment to open-source it at a certain time, > possibly the price would decrease for a longer time frame until the release > date. Personally, I wouldn't care if the release date comes after the > design is commercially obsolete, as long as it's certain.
Don Marti brought up this idea. The idea is to come to an agreement on terms of release and put the code in escrow with a trusted third party. This highly agreeable to me, because it proves that I'm serious about releasing it, and it ensures release even in the even that I become unable to release it myself. > Possibly embedded customers might be offered a slightly different > deal, tied to the first-refusal idea: for a specific license fee, they could > buy the right to obtain a copy of the documentation directly from the > trustee and manufacture units for their own needs, if the company failed to > accept an order and deliver, regardless of reason. > But I still don't see how trade secret protection is compatible with > FPGA development in the field. Is it possible to add compiled logic to an > FPGA load image without revealing the HDL source code? Not all the code we're developing under LGPL is useless on its own. The PCI controller, for instance, has great potential. If someone prefers our interface to that of the opencores design, or if they need AGP, which the opencores design does not support, then they can use ours, royalty-free according to the LGPL. I think of it also as a sort of balance. If I could GPL the whole design, then the PCI core would also be under GPL. But since I fear that I cannot make all parts free, then instead, I'll make some parts EVEN MORE free. :) As for VGA, it's a noncritical part of the design that nevertheless requires a ton of work. In the spirit of really wanting to GPL the whole thing, I though it would be nice to just share it from the start. I got tons of help with the 3D renderer but won't be releasing the code for a while, but people who helped knew that from the start. If someone else fabs the VGA emulator, it won't hurt us. If someone else fabs the 3D engine, it could put us out of business. This isn't me being stingy with code. It's me trying to make sure we are able to make a 2.0 some day. _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
