thrakkor
8/17/2012 5:06:49 PM
User Rank Blogger
2 cents
to me any level of open hardware is better than none at all.
i guess i'm not a purist and don't think the tools should be FOSS to call a design open. would i use FOSS EDA tools? sure would. i've used Icarus and GHDL simulators.. i also think open HW designs should be vendor/3rd party IP free as well. but that's me.
i don't ever see synthesis and par tools going FOSS because they are so intimately tied into a specific vendor architecture and technology. besides, most vendors have a free, limited device/size version of their tools anyone can use.. plus, the SW tool licensing models are cash cows for the vendors as well.
i feel that open hardware is more appropriate for hobbyist and educational endeavors, although some open IP is/can be used in commercial projects since a company's "secret sauce" or competitve edge may come from their HW IP. makes sense to keep it out of the public domain.
Great blog Hamster!
I, too, have long been unable to fathom the true direction of OSFs (Keen acronym, by the way). Indeed, the Raspberry Pi does have a completely proprietary BroadCom SOC; no pay, no knowledge. I do believe that a company's IP is their way to make money, and is just a fact of life.
There is a place...
I do see a place for open source hardware - both in the hobby world and in the commercial world, with the commercial world being defined as primarily small companies.
In the hobby world, it gives access to a lot of tools and designs that would not otherwise be available. It makes self-education and self-continuing-education much more effective.
With small business, it can provide an extended community of support that would otherwise be very difficult to find. It can give small businesses a jump start on their designs, albeit at the cost not owning the intellectual property.
As far as large companies go, I'm not so sure. The Beagleboard open source design can be used to help with escape routing on the .4mm pitch BGA OMAP processor. But a reference design could do the same thing. The use of something like the Beagleboard design as the heart of a commercial project could take a lot of time out of a development schedule, but, again, at the cost of the companies intellectual property.
alvieboy
8/17/2012 3:39:29 PM
User Rank Beginner
Remember OpenMoko ?
Hey Mike.
Indeed you might be right. As with everything there's always some fundamentalists that sometimes defeat the very purpose they are pursuing (on top of my head is indeed FSF's president, Mr. Stallman, who I have never met personally). I'm an Open Source Advocate, but I don't think everything must or even can be Open Source. Because OpenSource can indeed, in some scenarios, violate your own rights.
This reminds me a conversation I had with Jon "Maddog" Hall a few years ago. He had his recently-released OpenMoko GTA02 on his hand, and he spoke a lot about open source, and open design, but eventually I understood that he considered that he also thinked that closed source was necessary.
I'm not sure you all recall the Openness problems with OpenMoko GTA02: the GSM chip documentation was closed, and obtained by them for a huge amount of money and a NDA. The graphical acceleration chip was even worse in some aspects. Due to these problems, a new project launched: #gta02-core, which aimed to replace all those components with at least ones with open documentation. I was a part of #gta02-core team, which was leaded by Werner Almesberger. After a while, and when we almost had our design complete and ready for layout, Apple's iPhone came. We soon gave up on the project.
There are good things about Open Source. But in a true open world, you must accept every type of things - this is called true openness. You are free to open, you are free to close (perhaps a bit close to anarchy, I must admit).
All my software designs (my owns) are released under GPL, sometimes under CC. All my hardware designs are released under BSD license. This one (BSD) is the one I feel it's more open and true to it's purpose. But in software we are still too used to put a GPL label in it.
Alvie
Opensource why ?
@Mike, very interesting post I have never understood the open source argument outside the hobbiest area.
To my view real world companies Intellectual Property is how they make the money and they do not want competitors knowing how they acheive what they do. Hence NDA, TAA and the famous ITAR.
Maybe other people look at my mindset and do not get it also...
rfindley
8/17/2012 3:28:51 PM
User Rank Blogger
How much closed vs open source?
This brings up a great additional question:
How much close-source (i.e. closed to you) do you fellow engineers use in a typical project?
I have often been contracted to do maintenance work on old projects where the tools (compiler or IP) are old enough that they are no longer supported on current computers, or were lost during an acquisition, or were node-locked to some long-gone PC. So on projects with requirement for long product life, I find myself leaning toward open-source (or purchased source) whenever possible.
I have also found this comes in handy when a vendor has a driver problem that they don't seem to be in a hurry to fix. Anyone had similar experiences?
Conventional wisdom is to not reinvent the wheel... but I think sometimes it is useful to invent your own wheel the first time -- so that you own it -- and add it to your library for reuse or reference thereafter.
Brian
8/17/2012 2:55:21 PM
User Rank Guru
Excellent rant!
Hi Hamster,
Excellent rant with well justified positions.
I like your newly created initialism, "OSF" (open-source fundamentalist :-)
Re: "I see OSFs as being the sort of people who can discuss over a steak dinner how they could never kill animals for food.
Too funny! :-)
In MCU land, too
I hear you! Over in my home territory of Microcontroller Central we run into the OSF (open source fundamentalist) tribe from time to time as well. I try to ignore anybody who thinks there is only one right way to do anything, just so I can keep my blood closer to body temp.
From Max by proxy
Max is travelling and having trouble connecting (not sure if he's talking flights or WiFi) so he asked me to post this (or something like it) for him:
Boiling blood! Don't hold things in, Hamster. Tell us how you really feel! - Max
|
|
My goal is to hold a chess-playing extravaganza at Design West 2014, in which FPGA-based and/or MCU-based "Robots" compete for a grand prize.
In addition to applications for reprogrammable hardware and processors in the Internet of Things, it also seems as if there will be a growing need to embed pieces of FPGA-like fabric into SoCs.
Colors are simply names we give to specific wavelengths or combinations of wavelengths that are received by our eyes. Maybe we each see colors differently.
Now we are ready to bring all the parts together and construct the GPS-driven, FPGA-decoded Nixie tube speedometer for use in a 1953 International pickup truck.
Here's an image of the week and a joke of the week. Also, this week's live online chat takes place Thursday, June 20, at 1:00 p.m. ET (10:00 a.m. PT).
|
Tweet This
