On Tue, 10 May 2005, Eric Smith wrote:
I assume that you're not worried so much about FPGA-based products, but rather about a company spinning their own ASIC based on your RTL. If your RTL is GPL'd, they can do that. A solution is to use a license that does not permit commercial redistribution. The license could be otherwise similar to the GPL. Technically it wouldn't qualify as "open source", but it would be close enough for anybody not trying to use your own RTL to compete with you.
Sounds rather fair.
For an example on how one can combine GPL:ed code and business (probably not really comparable with this project since it's software-based) see:
http://www.mysql.com/company/
http://www.mysql.com/network/faq.html#15
Another approach that might solve the problem is to not make the RTL publicly available, but to offer limited licenses to the RTL source (possibly for a fee). So if Joe buys an FPGA card from you, he only gets the FPGA bitstream and no RTL source code. But if he also sends
One approach could be to just design prototype fpga-boards, letting someone else produce it, keeping the RTL secret and license the RTL to companies who wants to make graphics boards (i.e. letting them manufacture the ASIC and worry about wether it should be a 130nm or a 90nm process etc). This would take todays market with ATI and NVIDIA, who manufacture their own chips, one step further and letting the card makers (asus, sapphire etc.) make their own asics instead of ordering them. Then when you've reached a certain point (you've recouped your costs, made some profit, the next version is out, whatever...) you release the RTL under GPL(-like license?). To compensate the license purchasers they get the royalty fee reduced or perhaps even converting the licensing to a royalty-free version. This way you would have a "virtual" company which doesn't have to invest in hardware manufacturing (there are quite a few companies who has specialised in manufacturing other companies products, especially electronic ones). As a bonus the "open source community", which incorporates both private persons and companies, can work together to make a better version on the released, GPL:ed, version; improvements which can be integrated into a next-generation card. Of course this does leave a gap because you would need two "original" versions (the first and second), and the "community" improvements would not be available until the third version. Rinse and repeat...
Don't know if it would make you bullet proof though (or even if companies would be willing to license under the above conditions). But then again what company is? Let's say a company would like to manufacture their own version of a radeon chip; what's stopping them from dissecting the chip and rebuilding it "atom by atom" (except money of course)?
On the other hand the above would be quite flexible for companies doing specialised versions and perhaps they would be willing to be "good community citizens" and contribute improvements themselves...
Just my two {input whatever currency you want here}...Best regards
Peter K _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
