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| From: | Ineiev |
| Subject: | Re: [Savannah-hackers-public] GPL and “All rights reserved” |
| Date: | Sun, 02 Jun 2013 18:29:00 +0000 |
On 06/02/2013 04:36 PM, James Cloos wrote:
Out of curiosity: I wonder whether anything that depends on FPGA may qualify as free software system.KB> If the programmed chips, or instructions for the programming, KB> are available, why not? I'm sure I don't get it ... Most (all?) FPGA chips have undisclosed bitstream formats. One typically (always?) has to use closed-source-ware for the final stage of compilation. I presume that is what he referred to.
Yes, this is what I mean. I believe I've heard about a programmable logic chip family (I'm not sure whether they were FPGA or PLD) whose bitstream specificatons are not secret, but I don't recall ever hearing of a full free software toolchain for FPGA (not that I'm following news about it very closely, though).. and then I imagined: if it is FPGA-based mining, then it is its programmable logic that does most of the work.
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