Re: [oc] sparc licensing (was: OpenCore In the news) (fwd)

["Jecel Assumpcao Jr." <jecel@merlintec.com>]

Graham Seaman wrote:
> Haven't the ESA got round this with their Sparc-alike? At least that's
> how I understood this quote from http://eet.com/story/OEG20000306S0096:

Great article - it explains everything very clearly (and mentions Open Cores).

> If I understand this correctly, all you have to do is call your
> processor 'sparc-compatible', and then you don't need to worry
> about the 'community license'. Or am I misunderstanding?

There are three separate issues:

  1) the Sparc ISA is an open IEEE P1754 standard. You can make your own designs
compatible with it and get lots of software tools running for your chip
automatically.

  2) the "Sparc" trademark and logos belong to Sparc International. You have to
submit your designs to their certification process and pay them fees in order
to be able to use them with your products. This is what you can avoid by making
up your own name and calling your product "Sparc compatible" instead.

  3) Sun has released the full sources for a specific Sparc implemenation
(their MicroSparc, with UltraSparc coming out soon from what I heard) and if
you use those to develop a product you have to pay them fees in order to sell
it.

The ESA people did 1 and so can anyone else. Just like you have to pay Adobe to
include their Postscript implementation in your product, or you can create your
own "clone" (and call it a different name, like Ghostscript) for free.

What might make things confusing is that Sun includes a certification program
and logo/trademark licensing system as part of their Community License (at
least of the PicoJava core - I didn't check the Sparc). So the fees for 3 might
automatically include the fees for 2, but I am just guessing here.

-- Jecel