What happens to the GPL in FPGA & VLSI implementations?
Rob Myers
robmyers at mac.com
Sat Mar 19 10:51:52 EST 2005
On 19 Mar 2005, at 14:18, drew Roberts wrote:
> I think I know all of this, even though I am in many ways ignorant. The
> question that I was trying to have answered (I hope this is it, even I
> am
> getting confused now) is what is the difference between a high level
> design
> translated into ROM and one translated into an asic. The postulation
> that was
> after all was said and done, both were pieces of non-changeable
> silicon. Why
> should one be considered a copyrighted derivative of the original
> "source"
> that was used to produce it and one a non-copyrighted functional
> devicer
> "cake" baked from the original "source" "the recipe" that was used to
> produce
> it?
I'm still not a lawyer. :-)
Traditionally there's been a line drawn between copyrightable work and
functional industrial design. This is another of those things in
copyright that is just how it's done for historical reasons. If I had
to try to explain it, I'd say that copyrightable works have to be
understandably symbolic or encoded in some way. They have to have a
message, not do something. Information, not functionality.
Now, I'd argue that the chip is a photographic reproduction of a design
derived from the original textual description.
But certainly US law doesn't seem to be on my side, as the functional
nature of the chip design seems to trump its copyrightability. Which is
weird. So Greg's cookies look like the more appropriate model. Mea
culpa.
On the copyrightability of circuits (but are chips circuits?):
http://www.cni.org/Hforums/cni-copyright/1996-02/0251.html
Possibly someone could page RMS on this, he's tackled it before on
various lists but I can't find a definitively useful article for
ASICs/FPGAs anywhere.
Here he is on "free hardware" in 1999:
http://features.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=1999-06-22-005-05-
NW-LF
He clarifies that article on this list:
http://opencollector.org/hardlicense/maillist.html
- Rob.
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