XCore Open Source Project

[russf]

Congratulations to all involved in making this happen.

I hope to see many of the xcore regulars being involved in using and improving the code that accumulates on github. I look forward to checking on the tcp progress soon -- I want to dump the PIC32 Internet wart I depend on.

Success depends on developers not asking permission... Just do the hack, and send a pull request. Be prepared to justify your changes, and if you encounter resistance, ask for a branch. Failing that, go off on a fork for a while, and suggest a merge once the details are worked out.

Git is Darwinian, not authoritarian!

I share all of Jonathan's concerns. The license is very much on the side of the consumer, and provides no obligations to share back changes, improvements, or derivatives. I suppose time wil tell if this fosters a community, or if it looks more volunteers contributing expertise free of charge, while others leech for profit. I can see how XMOS would prefer a license like this, since it allows all the contributions to be offered as unencumbered incentives to purchasers of silicon. But what is the contributors' perception? In other projects I'm involved in, contributors benefit from recognition, and can expect their code to come back improved each time it is extended by an integrator.

For my part, I've agreed to the license, and would encourage the community to speak up as "the project" evolves if they feel that the license needs more attention.

Best wishes to XMOS and XCore members,

--r.

[dan]

I share all of Jonathan's concerns. The license is very much on the side of the consumer, and provides no obligations to share back changes, improvements, or derivatives. I suppose time wil tell if this fosters a community, or if it looks more volunteers contributing expertise free of charge, while others leech for profit. I can see how XMOS would prefer a license like this, since it allows all the contributions to be offered as unencumbered incentives to purchasers of silicon. But what is the contributors' perception? In other projects I'm involved in, contributors benefit from recognition, and can expect their code to come back improved each time it is extended by an integrator.

Hi Russ, hopefully part of the answer to these concerns is here:

https://github.com/xcore/Community/wiki ... velopments

While the license doesn't require integrators to push back changes, we'd hope that the systems and services outlined at the link above (to which we would hopefully all add, in time) would provide a strong incentive for them to do so. That way they'll have confidence that their changes are up to date with the latest tools and so forth.

Likewise, many of the more complex integrations would involve multiple components some of which the integrator may not understand that well. So to ensure they can get bug fixes to other components they depend on, hopefully they would learn that it is in their interests to participate properly. However perhaps thats a behavior that needs to be learned rather than required at the outset.

[segher]

I share all of Jonathan's concerns. The license is very much on the side of the consumer, and provides no obligations to share back changes, improvements, or derivatives.

Hey, it's called an "open source" project, not a "Free software" project ;-)

People who care about the difference can still use the GPL, just not on the XCore OSP. Which
is why you won't find my projects there (amongst other reasons).

But I don't want to sound negative. I wish all the best and good luck to the project!

[kasbah]

This is great news and it looks like it is already developing well. Why was the choice made to have an all encompassing agreement and license for all projects rather than a per project license as previously on xprojects?

[xmark]

This is great news and it looks like it is already developing well. Why was the choice made to have an all encompassing agreement and license for all projects rather than a per project license as previously on xprojects?

Hi Kasbah,

We wanted to keep things simple. Many of the repositories will be components, and not whole designs. If they all have their own different licenses, then putting together a project from multiple component repos would probably present more of a legal challenge than a technical one. Call it 'legal composability' ;-)

Cheers,

-Mark

[Folknology]

kasbah

You could also setup your own private repo on Github using whatever license you please, then pull from Xcore as required. However you could not push because of the license issue. Then again you could have repos within your own github area that have different licenses some of which could be pulled if legally compatible. But the simplest way by far is to use the same Illonois license from the beginning which gives you the bidirectional benefits.

regards
Al