On Mar 1, 2008, at 6:32 PM, John Sonnenschein wrote: > So, hence my question if anyone knows. The significant difference > between a G3 and a G4 ( aside from altivec ) is?
I don't believe the difference between a G3 and G4 is as big an issue in this case as the difference between an ODW and a PowerMac, which is quite substantial. Specifically, the components used in an ODW are documented as to their behavior - addressing, interrupt levels, etc. Despite the Linux distros available for the PowerMac, Apple has never released public documentation on their custom boards and bridge chips, and so the Linux drivers have largely been reverse engineered using various clean room methods and perhaps from the code contained in associated Darwin releases. Though IANAL, I suspect any knowledge of how the PowerMac works gained from Linux code would thus be covered under the GPL and would not be allowed in OpenSolaris because of conflicts between the GPL and CDDL. I haven't read Apple's Open Source license lately, so I'm not sure if we would have to clean room reverse engineer such information ourselves or if we could gather it from the Darwin drivers ourselves given proper APSL attributions. Anyone better versed in such issues can read the APSL here: <http://www.opensource.apple.com/apsl/> Of course the CDDL can be found here: <http://www.sun.com/cddl/cddl.html> William Kucharski
