[Nottingham] "tivoization", iPhone, and GPLv3 lockout?

[Martin]

Camilo Mesias wrote:
> Hardware might be mostly 'closed source' but pretty much every CPU
> manufacturer uses and respects open source tools. I'm not sure why
> CPUs are so different from graphics cards, etc. but it does seem to be
> that way.

That is an interesting curiosity.

I'll guess that it is a licensing hang-over from when IBM forced Intel
to license the x86 architecture to enable the 8086 and 8088 to be second
sourced by AMD (and others?).

We're all rather fortunate in how IBM left the PC system licensing and
patents open enough (intentionally or not) for others to multi-source
and develop the system.

Unfortunately since then, we seem to have been overly locked down by one
very successfully aggressive commercial player...


Cheers,
Martin

-- 
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Martin Lomas
martin at ml1.co.uk
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