Re: [oc] non-profit organization

[I Made Aria Bagus P <aria@students.ee.itb.ac.id>]

====================================================================
                 I Made Aria Bagus Pramana
Electronics Sub Department of Electrical Engineering Department of
              Bandung Institute of Technology
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On Tue, 8 Jan 2002, Damjan Lampret wrote:

> Hi John,
>
> thanks for Debian suggestion. I didn't know about SPI. Looks something we
> might want to "copy". I doubt it is good to go under their umbrella because
> their focus is software and I doubt they would go to design conferences and
> talk about open source HW. Anyway I'll send them an email to see what they
> think and if they could provide some guidenace at least.
>
> I did exchange two emails with RMS and it looks like he either thinks of
> "hardware" as something that is manufactured in a factory, or maybe he is
> just too busy with free software.
>
> regards,
> Damjan
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "John Dalton" <john.dalton@bigfoot.com>
> To: <cores@opencores.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2002 12:55 AM
> Subject: Re: [oc] non-profit organization
>
>
> >
> > I know this is my standard reply to everything
> > to do with administration. :-) but check out
> > Debian.
> >
> > They confronted this issue a few years ago.
> > As a result, they set up a company called
> > 'Software in the Public Interest' (SPI).  It is this
> > entity which accepts donations to the Debian
> > project and provides resources to the project.
> > I'm not sure of the details of the structure,
> > but I gather it allows Debian to accept donations,
> > provide a tax refund to donors and limit their
> > liability in these activities, without impacting
> > on the activities of the developers.
> >
> > As far as I know, SPI is not an advocacy group like
> > the FSF.
> >
> > Before embarking on the same path, perhaps it is worth
> > talking to the FSF and Debian?
> >
> > In the past, Richard Stallman (RMS) has argued against free hardware
> >
> (http://features.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=1999-06-22-005-05-NW-LF
> )
> > At the time (June 1999), he argued that the cost
> > of producing hardware reduced the need for freedom,
> > and hardware itself could not be copylefted (or
> > copyrighted).
> >
> > Since then hardware design has moved
> > much closer software design.  Generic fpgas have
> > reduced the cost of (and increased accessibility
> > to) the non-copyrightable hardware component.  Nearly
> > all of the cost, and effort, in todays hardware is in
> > the copyrightable, and easily distributed, programming
> > of the FPGA.  At the same time, accesibility to this
> > programming has been decreasing (like a software
> > binary).  I suspect in the current climate, RMS
> > (adn the rest of GNU) would come to the conclusion
> > that hardware is worthy of freedom.  I hear that RMS
> > is open to reasoned argument, just keep in mind that
> > he will not compromise on the freedom of software.
> >
> > Perhaps the FSF and SPI could be convinced to take
> > opencores under their wing, maybe even creating a
> > 'hardware division', saving us lots of administration
> > work?  At the very least, they could probably guide opencores
> > in setting up it's own structures.
> >
> > Best wishes
> > John
> > --
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> >
>
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