The fun bit is, according to the LKML thread, Redhat *are* a customer of theirs anyway :)

That is oversimplifying it too much. It does also state that if you make changes and distribute to anyone as binary or otherwise, you have to make those changes available to any third party, not just the recipient of the binaries, as per:

What planet do you live on? I wish to move there

So these people who want a 'fully open cpu' expect someone to put up large amounts of money to design, fabricate and mass-produce - enough production to drive down the per-unit costs to hobbyist-attainable levels - while exposing themselves to almost guaranteed direct competition against them using their own IP, all out of their own pocket so the hobbyist doesn't have to pay? How is that ever going to work? If you can't afford to fabricate a design *anyway* what point is there to having the design 'fully open' in the first place? I'd much prefer a refined, *well documented* core I can easily use wherever I want cheaply than having hdl to something I can never turn into tangible silicon. I'm not saying these recent ARM applications processors are well documented by the way. There's plenty of room for improvement there. Specially with the GPU interfaces. I just think people need to take a step back and realize 'fully open' isn't anywhere near as useful as 'well documented and production-grade'

I'm pretty sure you're able to fabricate the OR1200 HDL into an ASIC on your own if you wish. I'm not aware of the difficulty or costs in doing this as I've never fab'd a logic design but technically there's nothing stopping you. If I recall, the OR1200 has already been ASIC-proven.

There are x86 GPUs besides Intel, Nvidia, and AMD? I see the odd Matrox card once in a while but I wouldn't game on those anyway

Complete rubbish. You can turn off the final carriage return in nanorc - it's there because a lot of scripted config file parsers require it. I bet you didn't even know nano can do regex search&replace either. ps: "real engineers don't blame their tools" *happily employed developer and sysadmin of 20+ years who uses nano*

Well, except for that ugly cashew thing persistently visible on the desktop I never use and killing off the only plasma plugin that would let you hide it.. But that's the only shenanigan really. Stupid cashew.

And Cisco and ..

Yeah I guess Motorola are defunct, right?

I never said China was dangerous. I was just stating a fact that releasing the VHDL for their ASICS would be commercial suicide, and that releasing source doesn't prove there's no backdoors in the silicon. It's a futile exercise on the part of *both* sides. It boils down to nothing but America trying to defend it's own businesses and market share - not national security.

Please 'take your own medicine' and apply some critical thinking before making assumptions and lumping me in one category or another. And FYI, my wife is Chinese and I go there a lot to visit my delightful in-laws. I'm also American. Amazing eh? ...

Plus it would mean we could just fabricate new asics from their designs and not pay them, something they probably (and rightfully) don't want

Never say never :)

I hear you, honestly, but do keep in mind that sometimes change can be a good thing too. If they do it right, and it works everywhere, and gives you everything you had before but more.. why hold back? Sure, stay with what works for you for now but don't write off your options forever-more just because they're not there yet. I remember a time when I wouldn't own any phone but a Nokia, and wouldn't use a laptop because they were too underpowered and the screens were terrible. I wouldn't use anything that wasn't x86 and 32bit due to compatibility and stability. I wouldn't use wifi when ethernet was available because it was way slower and unreliable. I wouldn't consider using the internet on a phone due to cost and performance. All that's changed now and I couldn't be happier that it has

Remote vanilla X11 over even today's internet is fucking slow as balls and about as painful as being kicked in them. Even on a lan it can be pain if your client is generating too many unneeded events (try eclipse over ssh x11 forwarding some time). X11 does facilitate the use of, say, NX and VNC though to mitigate the problem. Does Wayland? If so then bring it on I say. As long as the end result is the same or better, how is it a bad thing?

Pretty sure using an API isn't covered by the scope of the copyright license anyway. If it were then glibc would be in DEEEEP shit. In fact, iirc glibc and linux *set the precedent* on this issue in the first place when they chose to be unix compatible and clone libc. Seems to me like Alan Cox is just having a tantrum about nothing ? And forgetting his roots in the process I guess.