[Arm-netbook] Libre RISC-V -- I mean OpenPower M-Class GPU update

[Paul Boddie]

On 2020-01-01 22:09, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
> 
> the collaboration that is in place, and which is otherwise
> successfully taking place, is taking place behind *closed doors*,
> where we, as Libre Businesses, are told, basically, "sign this
> agreement which entirely compromises your business model, or go fuck
> yourself".

I haven't followed what goes on with RISC-V licensing, but it rather 
sounds like there are vested interests who want to retain control and to 
leverage their inherent advantage as developers of the technologies 
concerned. This is a pretty familiar story from the world of standards, 
even Internet standards, where companies effectively "front-run" 
standards by loading them up with descriptions of their own 
technologies, effectively requiring standards implementers to play 
catch-up all the time.

This latter strategy is not quite the same thing as, say, people being 
gatekeepers to a CPU architecture, but it is part of a more general 
phenomenon of stacking the odds in one's own favour and disadvantaging 
outsiders. A more mundane example would be any one of numerous 
corporate-run Free Software projects that demand copyright or 
comprehensive licensing assignments from contributors, and who make it 
tediously difficult to get code upstream, all because the company's 
needs supposedly override all others.

> by complete contrast...
> 
> the OpenPower Foundation's Director, Hugh Blemings, is someone who has
> worked with Libre Developers (he himself is one) for over two, nearly
> three decades.
> 
> *he* was the one that told *me* that the OpenPower Foundation Members
> have created a Membership Agreement that is specifically designed to
> allow Libre Businesses to be "happy" with its terms and conditions.

Maybe ARM's success is a corrupting influence when companies and 
organisations try to monetise hardware architectures, but ARM only got 
into its lucrative position through a combination of good luck and a 
fervour for licensing things, the latter only ever coming about as some 
kind of correction for ARM's corporate predecessor's obsession with 
keeping everything proprietary and trying to use such proprietary 
technologies to their own exclusive competitive advantage. It will be 
interesting to see how the different initiatives (RISC-V, OpenPower, 
MIPS...) evolve to respond to openness concerns and the need to 
cultivate interest in their offerings more generally.

Paul