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The Need for Open Hardware
bwt asks: "With all the talk of DRM lately, it occurs to me that the entire concept depends on limiting the choice for computer hardware. OK, so the proper reaction to the copyright industry's attempts at PC market control is to be able to build a PC that they can't control. I know there have been some discussions on open hardware, but most if it was prior to the emergence of DRM as a real threat. In fact, Richard Stallman wrote an editorial in 1999 and said 'Because copying hardware is so hard, the question of whether we're allowed to do it is not vitally important.' DRM has perhaps changed that. Isn't the need for open hardware becoming critical? What is the status of the open hardware efforts?"
There's always OpenPPC.
To quote the site: "The immediate goal of the project is to enable interested parties to build inexpensive, PPC-based Linux boxes from IBM's reference plans. In the longer term, we hope to expand the open-source ideals expressed in the GPL to hardware projects, primarily motherboards."
There are a lot of open hardware designs at www.opencores.org.
CPU cores, Ethernet MACs, complete SOC designs, etc. It's a great site, especially if you are into fpga development.
The European Space Agency has made available VHDL for a CPU that implements the SPARC V8 instruction set. The VHDL is available under the GNU LGPL license. Granted, implementations of LEON are slow (25 MHz?) but it's totally freely available. You may need to buy a $99 license from SPARC International to actually sell any CPUs you make, but that's pretty cheap.
The SPARC instruction set is pretty simple. I don't imagine that a similar effort for x86 CPUs would be as simple or as quick.
Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
A brief introduction to the simputer to those who don't already know:
"The Simputer is a low cost portable alternative to PCs, by which the benefits of IT can reach the common man. "
The system software is available under GPL, and the hardware specs under SGPL, the full licensing info is here.
With a $99 FPGA development board and the free design tools from Xilinx, you too can make your own CPU without even breaking out a soldering iron. :)
Which is, in my opinion, a good definition. Open specifications of hardware is needed for fair competition in the OS-market, as well as for higher quality software. Drivers based on reverse engineered specifications is obviously harder to write than if you had the specifications from the start.
" Open Hardware is engineers sharing their designs with each other through the disclosure of their schematics and software systems used on their designs. Do you remember the time when you purchased a circuit board, or computer, and the schematics came with it? I do..."
What concerns us most is the thin layer between hardware and software: items like the BIOS and flash ROM. That layer is ripe for DRM and other technologies. That issue is quite different from Stallman's essay mentioned in the post. This isn't an issue of Free (as in freedom) hardware, but is about a matter of that "thin layer" of software where DRM will likely dwell.
FSF is currently extremely short on resources, but we hope to put at least some force behind initiatives to create Free Software in this area. In some sense, it is the last frontier for freedom on our computers. Indeed, the only proprietary software code anywhere in my computer is that which lives in the BIOS. Before now, the issue was not so strategically significant, but the fact that DRM technologies may soon live in that very BIOS makes it more significant than ever.
If anyone has an interest and reverse engineering experience, and would like involved with working on the free BIOS projects, particularly for laptop devices, please contact me. Also, please contact me if you would like to donate to a restricted fund for this effort, as we are considering setting one up if there is substantial interest.
Sincerely,
Bradley M. Kuhn, Executive Director, Free Software Foundation
www.sparc.com
From the SPARC site:
The whole problem with DRM is that anytime someone can choose between having it or not, they will almost always choose not to have it. This is elementary common sense.
Manufacturers are rightly scared of DRM for this reason. Anything too radical or obstrusive will kill sales. And what MPAA/RIAA wants is highly radical.
They are thus pursuing two avenues around the problem. The first is to make DRM a part of Windows. Since as we've observed most users (for a variety of reasons) are locked into Windows, they will have no choice but to (eventually) upgrade into DRM. There are some problems with this approach; they (correctly) don't trust Microsoft, either to do a good job or to look out for their interests, and there are those pesky "competitors." Will Apple play ball? Think about it. They'll have a powerful incentive not to, to try to use the Windows-DRM shock as an opportunity to gain marketshare. But of course, as has been well established in the past, Apple can be bought. That still leaves Linux. And that's a bit frightening, frankly, since you can't reliably control Linux, and the buzz on the street is that, someday, it might be what everyone uses.
That brings me to the second prong of this attack: the CBDTPA, in its many forms, past and (undoubtedly) future. And that, basically, would make "Open Hardware" illegal. If past legislation is any guide, it would probably also make talking about how to build open hardware illegal.
So if you're considering spending time and energy getting involved in the design and (god forbid) manufacture of open hardware, please don't bother. If you're determined to contribute to the issue, you're needed in Washington.
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
gEDA is also a good project for Linux people interested in open hardware: they develop a GNU liscenced set of hardware design tools.
Just my bookmarks two cents on the topic.
All circuits busy.
There actually already is a great deal of open hardware out there. It just depends on what you want to build, if you want to look at some neat circuit designs for various applications the University of Washington EE dept maintains a list of older circuit designs here (hey guess where I go to school). Pretty simple stuff like how to make Oscillators, pelter coolers, using serial ports, multi-vibrator circuit A-D converters, etc.
There are lots of other archives and examples, around the web. BUT, the catch is that this information is useless to most people. Unless you have a few hundred thousands of dollars to spend to make your own IC's the only option is microprocessors, FPGAs, CPLDs, etc. The design of custom IC's is not a consumer market and never will be untill someone comes out with a neat little Star Trek replicator. The closest thing to consumer IC's is MOSIS, which will make a few chips for you for around $10,000. The UW actually has two IC fabrication labs and only a few people can (and need to) make chips with them because the lithographic masks cost $30k each.
You can make your own processors if you really want, there are plenty of books that will teach you how to make your own Verilog MIPS processor. But, the software to take that design and turn it into a chip layout costs a couple hundred thousand dollars. But, if you want to build your own Pentium class processor, you're out of luck. Those designs are the property of whoever makes them, and with good reason. It costs millions of dollars to make and design these chips (don't forget just getting your chip to work is only 1/3 of the work, manufacturing it reliably is a far greater problem). There was a case several years ago against AMD (I believe) who suddenly came out with a memory design that was smaller than the industry standard. Funny thing was that another smaller company had come out with the design several months earlier... and guess what happened? They got a hold of the chips realized AMD had copied the design EXACTLY, except for a single reversed transistor (which didn't really change anything). Needless to say AMD lost a shit load of money and had to pay royalties. So, with respect to Stallman's rather silly statement the question is important and the answer is a resounding NO.
If you want to make your own circuits though, there are plenty of resources out there pcbexpress.com will take your PCB (printed circuit board) layouts and manufacture boards for under $100. And there's even free PCB design software out there (a lot of companies have their own for their services but everyone takes GERBER files - the industry standard for PCB layout). One popular free program is EAGLE which has Linux and Windows clients http://www.cadsoft.de/ , which has pretty good quality - hey its free. Plus there are lots of other PCB programs on Freshmeat. There are plenty of resources out there to make your own boards and lots of people do, but open hardware will never be as simple as downloading a design and hitting a button (even open source software isn't even that easy) because electronics isn't that simple. You can solder things together perfectly and have your design not work, because of some small detail or it could work perfectly, which is what makes it so fun!