XCore Open Source Project

[Joerg]

To the XMOS Community,

Today, we have launched the XCore open source project. If you haven’t had a chance to check things out, just go to github.xcore.com and take a look.

Many discussions over the last several months have helped XMOS to develop a better understanding of the community’s needs and desires. We have acted on your feedback, and today we are going public with:

1. A set of code repositories on github for collaborative development, including an open ticketing system
2. A proposed set of guidelines to help developers interact with the community and the code.

The homepage of the project is at github.xcore.com where you’ll find links to the current repositories and the guidelines.

A lot of work remains, but we hope you will agree that today is an important first step. We look forward to working together in enabling the XCore community to take the next step into collaborative development.

Joerg

P.S. A special thank you to Lilltrol for donating the xcore “github organization” to the project.

[Folknology]

Congratulations, this is a very import step as you say, well done Xmos.

regards
Al

[jonathan]

Excellent.

Is there somewhere where we can see a list of what XMOS will be releasing into these repositories over the coming months? I'm just browsing through now...

The commitments made in the name of openness are substantial - thank you all.

[DanB]

The commitments made in the name of openness are substantial - thank you all.

I'll say! This truly is a big day for XMOS. :)

[dan]

we have a fully featured I2C and CAN controller components in the works. Beyond that yes we do have a list of stuff we *think* will be useful to everyone, but before biasing opinion with that list I'm very keen to see

a) what everyone else in the community is going to add in the coming weeks and months
b) what everyone would find useful for their own projects

[lilltroll]

Is there a "fast update" to the XDE ?

E.g. can projects/modules be updated from GIT, without a deletion of the old project and a new import of the latest release.

Maybe some of the Eclipse plugins like EGit ?

[jonathan]

Umm... I don't mean to be picky but what is this agreement I am supposed to sign, and why is it needed?

https://www.xcore.com/OpenSourceAgreement

Most of it seems excessive given the simplicity of the Illinois/NCSA derivative licenses that apply to the source submitted to the repository. Most of it also seems entirely unenforceable. Much would seem to preclude the involvement of large numbers of employed individuals working on anything XMOS-related in their work. This in particular seems utterly unnecessary:

(d) You agree that your name may appear in a public list of contributors who have consented to this agreement.

Has it been looked at by an open-source legal expert? I can refer it to one if you like. If it's really necessary to have something like this, then fair enough... please don't take this as a criticism. It is an enquiry, and I do not want it to disrupt what looks like an excellent and highly anticipated initiative.

[davelacey]

Is there a "fast update" to the XDE ?

E.g. can projects/modules be updated from GIT, without a deletion of the old project and a new import of the latest release.

Maybe some of the Eclipse plugins like EGit ?

See https://github.com/xcore/Community/wiki ... tory-usage

Currently you have to clone a repo and then import it. The trick is not to copy the files when importing (a checkbox on the import wizard). This way the files you see in the XDE are the files in the cloned repository so you can do version control on it from the command line.

The next version of the tools will support third party plugins so EGit will work and you can do your version control directly from within the XDE.

Dave

[jonathan]

Also, since the license covers assignment of stuff to "The project" I'd like to know what "The project" is, legally. Is it an unincorporated association, charity, not for profit company, etc? What is it's constitution? Does it have a Committee that runs it? Who decides how and what it does? Is the manager likely to be "elected" at some point in the future? I would have thought these were quite important to know. The agreement as it currently is seems to permit "The project" to "offer for sale, sell" work that is submitted to "The project". Is this what was actually intended?

[Joerg]

Regarding the licensing questions, Dave Lacey just started a separate thread on that topic. I'll reply in some more detail on there, but a quick answer is:

* the licensing structure is modeled after common open source practices (e.g. Apache)
* the legal and licensing aspects have been reviewed by open source legal experts - I'll see if they are willing to comment here on this forum (the main person is traveling, so might take a few days for a response).

Over to https://www.xcore.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=1068 now....

Joerg