Re: [[oc] RE: Free License]

[jamil khatib <jamilkhatib@netscape.net>]

Hi,

First of all you can refere to the OpenIPCore mailing list archieve to see
some comments there.


"Joe Zott" <jaz@itvc.com> wrote:

Reference: Regarding the license you can also check the detailed suggestions
and comments also at OpenIPCore project at
http://www.openip.org/oc/license.html we had several suggestions about such
license for OpenHardware cores

This appears to be a good start on defining basic license terms, but

The problem with this page is:

1. It is not written as a license.
Do you mean the basics or the OHGPL
 
2. "No money can be earned by selling the designs them selves, ..." What is
the definition of a design in the context of this license?
as it is defined in OHGPL : 

Is any work that defines, describes or simulates a system or part of a system
that could be physically implemented. This includes but not limited to, system
architectures, design ideas,
design description, micro-codes or hardware instructions.


3. It says that "Any update to the design should be documented and returned
to the design." Does that mean that all changes needed to support various
synthesis and simulation tools need to be shared?

Yes, In this way the design will be tested on many platforms

 Even those that conflict
with other people or require a tool that is not freely available? I make
lots of changes to a design when testing it. Are these all updates?

you need to update only the last changes "final release"

4. The license needs to discuss synthesis and simulation scripts. I would
like to see them contributed with the design.

Yes, they are so important the same as teh design.

5. "Any derivative work based on the IP should be free under OpenIP Licnese.
Derivative work means any update, change or improvement on the deisgn." This
statement means that I can't modify a CPU to add a proprietary bus
interface.

Yes this is like the GPL

6. "Any work based on the design can be either made free under OpenIP
licnese or protected by any other licnese." This only allows me to sell
OpenIP blocks that are unchanged.


No you can not sell OpenIP blocks before or after changes


 It is highly unlikely that any hardware
block can be used in a new design without some amount of change.


changes means derivative work


7. With 2-3 times as much money being spent on hardware verification as in
design we should provide mechanisms to encourage (and in some cases perhaps
demand) verified (and documented) designs.

yes but this comes slowly since each one can add some new comments. and this
is one of the good advantages of openip cores since you release the design
early and get comments and bug reports from others in short time which reduces
the over all time needed to debug and verify it, this is because the debugging
is shared between many people. This is exactly what is happining in the LINUX
world


I have looked at most of the designs available as open IP and I wouldn't use
any of them in a commercial project. Not that they are bad designs, but that
they lack documentation and verification. The sole exception to that is the
SDRAM interface on the opencores site has a very nice documentation package.

8. There is no discussion about making the designs freely available. Let say
that the site that hosted the design that I based my design on is no longer
available, do I have the responsibility of making it freely available? 
yes you can and in this case you will have teh new host of the design only in
this way the designs lives in opposite to the commercail designs because some
of them dies when the copany is closed

Can I
just make it available on my own and not return it to the site I took it
from? A design that is well documented, with test vectors, and log files,
represents a significant amount of data. Perhaps more data than a person
might want to download over the Internet. Do I have a responsibility
(similar to GPL) to make the design available in other formats?

yes

The open IP hardware movement needs a geniune license. Until one is created
and agreed to any work being published remains owned by the authors.

Thats what we are trying to do

Regards to all,

Joe

regarding the last discussions about GPL and LGPL you can find a link to an
article from RMS describes the diference and when to use each one in the
articles page in OpenIPCore site


[please move all nontechnical emails to the OpenIPCore mailing list ]




pls: replay to khatib@ieee.org

Thanks
Jamil Khatib
OpenIP Organization http:/www.openip.org
OpenIPCore Project  http://www.openip.org/oc
OpenCores  Project  http://www.opencores.org

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