Re: Xilinx Legal

Phil Tomson wrote:

> >You would add a viral clause which makes sure that further refinements
> >of the tool are also covered by the same dual condition (GPL + Xilinx only).
>
> Yes, I've been thinking exactly the same thing. I don't see where requiring
> Xilinx-only usage is all that big of a deal, AND practically speaking you don't
> give up much at all since most retargetting should probalby be done at some
> higher level anyway.

Still, it's essentially impossible to do this and have the tool be open
source. If the code is open source it can be published in a book; that
book can be purchased as a physical object and under the first sale
doctrine used as reference material to guide any effort someone wants -
including trying to make chips that compete with Xilinx.

> Really, I think all we need at this point is for someone at Xilinx to get
> permission to put an XDL file format spec on their website somewhere as an
> appnote. If that can be done, then I think we're good to go.

Yes, that would simplify things.

Another option is that some of the applications (reconfigureble
computing for example) might not need the whole thing to be able to
show results promising enough to warrant consideration of expanded
releases in the future. If I understood the complaint with high level
interfaces for that application, it's that the authors of these
experimental tools want to produce very low level, repetitive
structures, but modern synthesis tools take their carefully crafted
output and munge it by in essence trying to figure out what the silly
human wanted so that they can optomize it with trade secrets - which in
this unique case is counterproductive.

What if just enough of the format of XDL or something similar were
released to expose a low level "programming" interface that's sort of a
gigantic version of a very primitive FPGA architecture, either without
most of the modern improvements other than size, or without anything
but the most basic ways of using whatever advanced functional blocks
are included in the release?

It seems if something like that could be released, and people
demonstrated something interesting with it that hinted at chip sales,
maybe cases could be made for releasing other information.

.