On 2006-11-24, Hamie wrote: > 3. Somewhere between... Where does closed firmware come into it? If the HDL > is > available, and the driver is available, what if most of the value add are in > closed source firmware? Should a vendor be able to take open source hardware, > add closed source firmware & use open source software for the driver?
Before I address the real question, we must make sure there is a minimum quality of the provided HDL. The GPL requires that the provided sources are the preferred form for editing (rather than generated code), which guarantees they are no less obscure than when the authors can cope with. This given, if HDL is available, then the hardware is at least useful to the FOSS community, even if it might take significant work to make it useful to end users. I think the question is essentially the same as the case when most of the value add is in the drivers. I think the issue of closed firmware value add boils down to how the product is marketed. We might require that when the OHF mark is used, then the company must distinguish the features provided by the hardware from those added by any proprietary firmware and drivers. That is, when OHF mark is used in marketing, the marketing must be fair with respect to the OHF mark. Otherwise would be misleading advertising. Once the FOSS community has created a firmware/software stack, the implied features can be advertised along with the OHF mark. In practise this could be done by requiring that a statement is placed next to the logo with information where to find the alternative feature-set. > 4. Should the OHF define multiple levels of open? Or just one? Sounds like a good idea. The marks should look similar to establish OHF brand recognition, but with clearly distinct features indicating the level of openness. _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
