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Message
From: Shawn Tan<shawn.tan@a...>
Date: Tue Jul 31 20:01:08 CEST 2007
Subject: [oc] future of open source fpga design tools
On Tuesday 31 July 2007 09:50:30 Günter Dannoritzer wrote:
> Also most of the people are Electrical Engineers and not Software
> Engineers and it is hard to convince a Software Engineer to develop a
> software as open source that s/he will probably never use him/her self.
I think that you've pretty much nailed it there. However, this applies to a
grass root movement to produce an Open Source tool. There is another
possibility, such as an existing tool vendor, opening up their source code.
They could potentially use some form of dual-license for hobby/academic versus
commercial use. They can also isolate the proprietary bits and open up only
some parts of the software.
This could happen for FPGA vendors as their main business is selling chips.
Opening software up can increase community participation, reduce maintenance
costs and generate good will, which may help them sell more chips. I see this
happening eventually.
However, I do not see this happening for the ASIC tool vendors, who make money
on the secret sauces they put inside their software. I'd settle for industry
wide standard file formats. This would allow designers to mix + match tool
chains with design libraries and fab processes.
Cheers.
--
with metta,
Shawn Tan
Aeste Works (M) Sdn Bhd - Engineering Elegance
http://www.aeste.net
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