[time-nuts] Controlling FEI 5680A

Attila Kinali attila at kinali.ch
Mon Jan 16 10:31:49 UTC 2012


On Sun, 15 Jan 2012 16:45:56 +0100
Magnus Danielson <magnus at rubidium.dyndns.org> wrote:

> A short notice on embedded CPU/MPUs into FPGAs. Using PIC or AVR might 
> be tempting, but I consider any clone "dirty" from a rights perspective, 
> MIPS for instance have been very protective on their side, so has ARM. 
> So far has the SPARC been the only big one being accepted in their 
> LEON-x variants that I know of. We be sad to see the cotton industry 
> level being smashed by the big firm lawyers.

Erm... You trust too much in corporate mambojambo...

1) These clones implement an ISA (instruction set architecture)
2) You cannot copyright an ISA (the same as you cannot copyright a header file)
3) You can only copyright a specific implementation
4) You can patent certain ways how instructions work (see MIPS)

These clones are thus not any more dirty then their originals.
Only that the companies don't want you to use them. Which, from
their point of view is understandable: It takes time and money
to come up with a good ISA. It is something that you cannot easily
protect (see above). But the companies want you to buy _their_ chips,
not the ones from their competitor. Hence, if they cannot get rid
of those clones, they try to get as much FUD out as possible to ensure
that nobody is using those clones. If this clone is produced by a company,
the company will challange that FUD and get rid of it legally. If the
clone is done by a few guys in their free time and released as open source
(resp open hardware), then they will not have the time and money to battle
that FUD. and innocent people like you will fall for it.

			Attila Kinali

-- 
The trouble with you, Shev, is you don't say anything until you've saved
up a whole truckload of damned heavy brick arguments and then you dump
them all out and never look at the bleeding body mangled beneath the heap
		-- Tirin, The Dispossessed, U. Le Guin



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