[Arm-netbook] FSF-Endorseable Processor

[Troy Benjegerdes]

> > what is the business logic?
> > 
> > for this money do you get the right to buy the chip? or do you get a 
> > certain quantity (like say $10m worth)? or do you get sole rights to it?
> 
> 
> It would be good if ICube released their VHDL to show their intentions
> are made of gold.

I would like to purchase a license to the iCube VHDL, and release it under
the AGPLv3, or a to-be-developed 'Open Hardware License', which would 

a) protect both myself and iCube from competitors that wish to fab the
core without a commercial license

b) demonstrate to the world this is a serious libre-hardware project.

This is an open question to iCube and I hope they'll give me an answer
publicly, and I'll publicly go raise the money to do it.

What I've been able to tell so far is that this MVP architecture is a 
lot like the Tera (now Cray) MTA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray_MTA

The cynic in me says they'll never release their VHDL core without heavy
NDA protection because if they did, someone from Tera (or Cray) would 
recoginize code they wrote.

This is also my theory about why all these IP cores come with stupid 
NDAs and stupid software licensing.. They are all just ripping each
other off and just want to hide this fact from the vulture capitalists
and shareholders.

All that being said, I'd be quite happy to do this under NDA as well 
so everyone can keep their secrets, as long as I get to have a chip 
that I can put on a PCB and release the PCB and thermal solution as 
Libre Hardware.