[asterisk-dev] Asterisk Appliance?

[Steve Underwood]

Jason Parker wrote:

>----- Kevin P. Fleming <kpfleming at digium.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>----- Denis Smirnov <ds at seiros.ru> wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>Sun T1 (Niagara) GPL'ed
>>>      
>>>
>>Not quite. First, according to the Sun OpenSPARC web site, nothing has
>>yet been released, and when it is, it will be under 'an OSI-approved
>>license'. There is no mention of the GPL.
>>
>>Second, what they are open sourcing is the Verilog design of the CPU
>>and the associated tools. The actual implementations they manufacture
>>(the chip masks, etc) are most definitely not open source. That means
>>if you want to produce the same CPU, you can use their Verilog as a
>>starting point, but you will have a LOT of work to do to make an
>>actual functioning and manufacturable processor that meets the design
>>specifications.
>>
>>In other words, yes, it is (or will be) an open source design, but the
>>chips that Sun produces and sells are _NOT_ open source.
>>
>>    
>>
>
>I don't do hardware, so I don't have any idea what this really means, but this is a direct quote from Jonathan Schwartz, from when I asked him to elaborate on what he meant by "[...] Sun's UltraSPARC platform, the world's only GPL microprocessor [...]" (ref: http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/ubuntu_on_niagara_and_platinum).
>
>"The RTL for SPARC is under GPL - check out OpenSPARC.org"
>
>Obviously, he may have misstated, but that was the answer I received from him directly.
>  
>
There certainly seems to be complete GPL'ed RTL level Verilog for the T1 
(not sure if its just the core or the whole chip) on opensparc.org. I 
don't think there is any question that GPL is appropriate for Verilog. 
However, the original comment from Kevin was about GPL not being 
relevant to hardware. I think this is both true and untrue. There are 
parts of a design for which GPL works - e.g. source code which ends up 
as logic - and parts for which it is useless because it doesn't protect 
anything of value - e.g. copyright of the schematic doesn't protect the 
circuit design it describes.

Steve


Steve