Re: [oc] Inquiry

[Richard Herveille <richard@asics.ws>]

> >
> > You have just proven one of the points I made earlier:  Commercial
> > users avoid Opencores because you need to be a legal expert in order
> > to understand how they may and may not be used.  Good work!
> >
> > To make a Opencores relevant to anybody other than hobbyists and
> > small-time support firms, I suggest that an Opencores licence with no
> > restrictions (and no liability) be developed.  Anything other than
> > that will just scare the typical corporate designer away.
>
> Note that this does not solve anything. The real problems lie elsewhere,
> e.g.: even if you say something is free, your employer could think
> otherwise...

That's correct. I just had a verbal fight for Design&ReUse about OpenCores 
with somebody from SONICS Inc. SONICS made the following public statement:

"
I can not believe that anyone in our (=SoC) industry will seriously use any of 
the open-cores. The effort you might have with the integration of these cores 
might be higher than designing new ones from scratch - at least you will not 
see any cost saving compared to licensing 'real' cores.
"

and a second quote:

"
people do not get laid off for introducing products from market leaders like 
IBM and HP (even if they fail) into an organization, but for using promising, 
but cheap products, which -at the end- are not shown as technically and 
economically useful.
"

Of course these are quotes from somebody who is trying to keep people away 
from open source products, as they are trying to sell their own (bus & micro 
networks) solutions. Just like Linux is making a fist at Windows (albeit a 
very small fist), open source IP cores are making a fist at professional IP 
providers.

If OpenCores sees a role to play in this game, we need a license that is clear 
and allows companies to use it. This does NOT mean that companies can do 
whatever they want with the code, nor does it imply that companies do not 
have to return improvements. That might be part of the license.

I feel that the GPL style licenses make this impossible, that's why I choose a 
BSD style license. However I do not like the fact that it implies that 
modifications do not have to be returned. If somebody comes up with a license 
that features the above mentioned I will be happy to change.

Maybe this means we need to write our own 'Open Source Hardware License' 
agreement; 
OCPL: Open Cores Public License?
OIPL: Opencores IP Publice License?

Richard


>
> Marko


--
To unsubscribe from cores mailing list please visit http://www.opencores.org/mailinglists.shtml