You're definitely not trolling (and I agree with you that FlexLM sucks). But contrast what you have to say:
Xilinx's move to FlexLM is a big deal. It's why I went with them over Altera in the first place. That reason is now gone.
with what he had to say:
I personally chose to avoid Xilinx for my uses, in favor of Altera. Not because I dislike Xilinx or anything, but simply because the last thing I wanted is more licensing complexity to deal with.
To me, that reads like he thought Altera's licensing scheme was better, easier, simpler. My understanding and belief is that was never true -- it was advantage Xilinx until they decided to tie it up by also succumbing to FlexLM. But, the offer at the end of my email remains -- if he thinks Altera licensing is better, by all means let him explain himself.
As I mentioned, there is a project someone (Andy Ross) did to allow programming (without a separate JTAG cable). Just search comp.arch.fpga for linux and nexys2.
It sounds like maybe you could combine that with what you have done, and get both programming and data transfer. I have no interest in programming the on-board microprocessor -- I just want a communications channel between a Linux host and an FPGA. Digilent provides a good communications channel between Windows and an FPGA, but not Linux.
This is probably a bit of a troll, but I'll bite anyway.
1) Until version 11.1 (earlier this year), Xilinx software was never protected by ANYTHING. (Well, you had to enter a serial number, but the FAE would probably give you one).
2) Xilinx software never expires -- the 1 year gets you updates, but you can still keep using it after that.
3) At version 11.1, Xilinx started using FlexLM licensing. While I am not a fan, it has not proved all that difficult. Now, I have to admit that I haven't tried licensing the free Webpack under 11.1 (only the full-up paid-for release), so don't know whether there are issues with multiple machines, but older versions of webpack (such as 9.2, a very good version) work fine on all the currently supported parts, and there are no problems with downloading them to multiple machines.
So, only with the very latest release, which isn't really necessary for the parts that Webpack currently supports, might you have to worry about licensing in any significant fashion. You write like this has been the case all along, so this leads to the next question:
4) EVERY TIME I look at altera, the licensing puts me off. Have they significantly changed it? Why do you think it's better? If memory serves, they've been using FlexLM for a very long time (which Xilinx just started to do earlier this year).
I think you mean: VHDL for (code which will never live anywhere except inside) FPGAs and Verilog for (all other design, including main-line CPUs from Intel and AMD, and also) ASICs.
I think it can be harder for a newbie to get a functioning VHDL design.
But in particular, I disagree with your reasoning about why to use VHDL vs. Verilog. Obviously, everybody's mileage may vary, but removing all vestiges of familiarity so that everything gets equally hard is not the way I learn.
The way I learned C was by looking at the assembly language output of the compiler, and you can effectively do the same thing with hardware.
It's not that hard to see what kind of logic your stuff compiles into -- in fact, you can dump a verilog netlist that shows you exactly how your logic maps to the internal chip elements. At a higher level, you can just look at the resource utilization report to see how "big" your circuit is.
In terms of the "right" language to learn for other reasons, apparently VHDL is somewhat more popular in Europe, and maybe somewhat more popular among FPGA-only designers, but all the "real" chip companies in the US use Verilog.
I use these at work for general-purpose little widgets. They are great for all sorts of control/data collection devices. I think we've bought around 50 or so over the past couple of years.
Unfortunately, they do not support Linux.
There is an FPGA programming solution around for this board which does support linux (search for Nexys2 on comp.arch.fpga), but it does not support the data transfer function.
The data transfer function is very nice (under Windows). digilent supplies a driver and DLL, and I find it very easy to transfer data using Python. I do wish they supported Linux, though -- that's all I use at home.
You're right -- my bad. Not enough coffee yet -- I was conflating my "perceived reality" with the legality of the situation.
The legality is that the notice has to be appended.
The perceived reality is that, whenever I receive pre-compiled commercial software with BSD-licensed components, I CAN find the license somewhere in the documentation, but it's completely uninteresting because I can't recreate the entire package anyway, and even if I were interested enough to track down the source for the component, it would be the unmodified source, perhaps not matching, and in any case, nothing in the license says exactly how important that BSD licensed package was to the overall effort. In short, the license text is one more piece of boring text in a large licensing document.
GPL licensing can be similarly boring, but with GPL components, I can at least get the exact version the vendor is using, and any of his code that links directly to it, so, qualitatively, it "feels" different.
Writing this up just made me realize something about the original rant -- if people are, indeed, calling him a "bad programmer" (perhaps because he delivers a 95% solution and they have to fix a few bugs themselves?) then the GPL would, in fact, probably be a better license for him if his ego would calm down enough for him to review changes that his customers make and apply some of them upstream.
I didn't particularly like the rant, but those licenses (except for old 4 clause BSD) DON'T have such a thing, UNLESS you're delivering source. Pay attention -- the guy is ranting about people who DON'T deliver source.
Seriously, if ATSC and HDMI confuses you, you might want to reevaluate your need to use a television.
There. Fixed that for you. I mean, are you seriously arguing that non-techies shouldn't be able to surf the web, use email to swap photos, and then print them out?
You wear an earpiece and I'll tell you what to say. We'll go all Sash Baron Cohen in Detroit. Then you can get a first-hand taste of exactly what saying things other people don't want to hear can lead to.
The government uses fancy lawyers like you to steal from people, in civil court, where they don't have to provide a lawyer, instead of actually proving that a crime was committed.
The fact that you seem to think this is peachy-keen fine is a reflection on your morals, not on the parent's education or intelligence.
"That can't be done in Verilog without dropping out to C."
I don't know that I'd want to do that in Verilog, because dropping to C is fine, but -- you do realize that Verilog is Turing-complete, right? IOW, you could write a TCL interpreter in Verilog if you were masochistic enough to do so. (Or if you were slightly brighter, you could say "Hey, I can interface C to Verilog, and I have this TCL interpreter C source code. Gee, I wonder if I could connect them?")
"VHDL was created by hardware engineers who know nothing about programming languages. Verilog was created by computer scientists who know nothing about hardware."
Ummm, no.
VHDL is a subset of Ada.
Verilog was created by a company actually doing chip verification.
Ada, as any good student of languages should know, is a clusterf**k. Why Modula-2 (one of the contenters) wasn't chosen for Ada is a complete mystery to me.
As an aside, I used to program a lot in Modula-2. It was great. But then, ANSI C came along, and between the C standard maturing, and the compilers getting smart enough to ask if you REALLY wanted to do "if (x=0)", C became "good enough" and Modula-2's popularity waned.
These days I mostly program in Python and Verilog. I would have even less hair if I had to do my logic in VHDL.
Further reading indicates this is very hard to prosecute, and requires actual attempt at concealment. So, aside from South Carolina or somesuch, you appear to be right:)
Standing up against the tactical thuggery of an organization which purports to represent the "recording industry" is not at all the same as being "anti-recording industry."
You could spend $75.00 filing a "provisional patent application" with all the relevant information.
Even though you don't plan on turning this into a real patent application, it will establish a baseline date AT THE PATENT OFFICE for your invention. Someone else would have to prove that they invented before that date.
You will certainly want to publicize it widely, for it to count as prior art, but having an official date from the patent office itself couldn't hurt.
When's the last time you heard of a waiter signing an NDA?
When's the last time you heard of a waiter or restaurant being sued for breaching a contract like this?
In real life, people who steal credit card numbers, if caught, are sent to jail. This is true even in cases where there has not yet been any monetary theft via the credit card numbers, because the law assumes that the only reason someone would have credit card details is to misuse them.
OK, partly my bad -- I meant parent's parent's post:
So does you proclamation apply to whisle blowers, people in witness protection, confidential documents, your SSN, trade secrets, etc.
People have a perfect right to protect their secrets, otherwise they wouldn't be secrets.
Of course they have 'the right' to protect their secrets - as in this case, their identity. However, do they have a legal leg to stand on in trying to fight somebody who has made that secret public? I'd say they don't.
Now you could argue that the whole rest of the post was about "in this case, their identity," but it reads as if that's a subordinate clause, and in the next sentence, "that secret" is, to this reader's eyes, deliberately general. If he'd meant "identity" he would have said "identity." Taken in context, the casual reader could very easily think that "I'd say they don't." applies to any secret (since that post was in reply to one making a point about secrets in general, and then that casual reader could make a post asking the obvious question about credit card numbers, and then get replied to and modded as a troll by some even more casual readers who can't follow threads properly, and who when called out out it, infallibly mark the specific, subordinate clause in a post as the most important text ever in the whole wide word. (tm)
Slashdot Mirror
with what he had to say:
To me, that reads like he thought Altera's licensing scheme was better, easier, simpler. My understanding and belief is that was never true -- it was advantage Xilinx until they decided to tie it up by also succumbing to FlexLM. But, the offer at the end of my email remains -- if he thinks Altera licensing is better, by all means let him explain himself.
As I mentioned, there is a project someone (Andy Ross) did to allow programming (without a separate JTAG cable). Just search comp.arch.fpga for linux and nexys2.
It sounds like maybe you could combine that with what you have done, and get both programming and data transfer. I have no interest in programming the on-board microprocessor -- I just want a communications channel between a Linux host and an FPGA. Digilent provides a good communications channel between Windows and an FPGA, but not Linux.
This is probably a bit of a troll, but I'll bite anyway.
1) Until version 11.1 (earlier this year), Xilinx software was never protected by ANYTHING. (Well, you had to enter a serial number, but the FAE would probably give you one).
2) Xilinx software never expires -- the 1 year gets you updates, but you can still keep using it after that.
3) At version 11.1, Xilinx started using FlexLM licensing. While I am not a fan, it has not proved all that difficult. Now, I have to admit that I haven't tried licensing the free Webpack under 11.1 (only the full-up paid-for release), so don't know whether there are issues with multiple machines, but older versions of webpack (such as 9.2, a very good version) work fine on all the currently supported parts, and there are no problems with downloading them to multiple machines.
So, only with the very latest release, which isn't really necessary for the parts that Webpack currently supports, might you have to worry about licensing in any significant fashion. You write like this has been the case all along, so this leads to the next question:
4) EVERY TIME I look at altera, the licensing puts me off. Have they significantly changed it? Why do you think it's better? If memory serves, they've been using FlexLM for a very long time (which Xilinx just started to do earlier this year).
Maybe the use of VHDL is the reason you've only ever worked on one ASIC?
I think you mean: VHDL for (code which will never live anywhere except inside) FPGAs and Verilog for (all other design, including main-line CPUs from Intel and AMD, and also) ASICs.
But in particular, I disagree with your reasoning about why to use VHDL vs. Verilog. Obviously, everybody's mileage may vary, but removing all vestiges of familiarity so that everything gets equally hard is not the way I learn.
The way I learned C was by looking at the assembly language output of the compiler, and you can effectively do the same thing with hardware.
It's not that hard to see what kind of logic your stuff compiles into -- in fact, you can dump a verilog netlist that shows you exactly how your logic maps to the internal chip elements. At a higher level, you can just look at the resource utilization report to see how "big" your circuit is.
In terms of the "right" language to learn for other reasons, apparently VHDL is somewhat more popular in Europe, and maybe somewhat more popular among FPGA-only designers, but all the "real" chip companies in the US use Verilog.
I use these at work for general-purpose little widgets. They are great for all sorts of control/data collection devices. I think we've bought around 50 or so over the past couple of years.
Unfortunately, they do not support Linux.
There is an FPGA programming solution around for this board which does support linux (search for Nexys2 on comp.arch.fpga), but it does not support the data transfer function.
The data transfer function is very nice (under Windows). digilent supplies a driver and DLL, and I find it very easy to transfer data using Python. I do wish they supported Linux, though -- that's all I use at home.
The legality is that the notice has to be appended.
The perceived reality is that, whenever I receive pre-compiled commercial software with BSD-licensed components, I CAN find the license somewhere in the documentation, but it's completely uninteresting because I can't recreate the entire package anyway, and even if I were interested enough to track down the source for the component, it would be the unmodified source, perhaps not matching, and in any case, nothing in the license says exactly how important that BSD licensed package was to the overall effort. In short, the license text is one more piece of boring text in a large licensing document.
GPL licensing can be similarly boring, but with GPL components, I can at least get the exact version the vendor is using, and any of his code that links directly to it, so, qualitatively, it "feels" different.
Writing this up just made me realize something about the original rant -- if people are, indeed, calling him a "bad programmer" (perhaps because he delivers a 95% solution and they have to fix a few bugs themselves?) then the GPL would, in fact, probably be a better license for him if his ego would calm down enough for him to review changes that his customers make and apply some of them upstream.
I didn't particularly like the rant, but those licenses (except for old 4 clause BSD) DON'T have such a thing, UNLESS you're delivering source. Pay attention -- the guy is ranting about people who DON'T deliver source.
There. Fixed that for you. I mean, are you seriously arguing that non-techies shouldn't be able to surf the web, use email to swap photos, and then print them out?
Let's try a little experiment.
You wear an earpiece and I'll tell you what to say. We'll go all Sash Baron Cohen in Detroit. Then you can get a first-hand taste of exactly what saying things other people don't want to hear can lead to.
Hey, can I have your bank account details?
The government uses fancy lawyers like you to steal from people, in civil court, where they don't have to provide a lawyer, instead of actually proving that a crime was committed.
The fact that you seem to think this is peachy-keen fine is a reflection on your morals, not on the parent's education or intelligence.
For example, the FCC won't *let* the University ban wireless routers.
(Although the University can have a policy that disallows you sharing your bandwidth via the router.)
Most of them have not raised children.
People who have raised children know that (in general), little girls and little boys are different, right from the beginning.
And this particular parent has two girls who, despite my best efforts, are not interested in the slightest in programming or engineering.
I don't know that I'd want to do that in Verilog, because dropping to C is fine, but -- you do realize that Verilog is Turing-complete, right? IOW, you could write a TCL interpreter in Verilog if you were masochistic enough to do so. (Or if you were slightly brighter, you could say "Hey, I can interface C to Verilog, and I have this TCL interpreter C source code. Gee, I wonder if I could connect them?")
Ummm, no.
VHDL is a subset of Ada.
Verilog was created by a company actually doing chip verification.
Ada, as any good student of languages should know, is a clusterf**k. Why Modula-2 (one of the contenters) wasn't chosen for Ada is a complete mystery to me.
As an aside, I used to program a lot in Modula-2. It was great. But then, ANSI C came along, and between the C standard maturing, and the compilers getting smart enough to ask if you REALLY wanted to do "if (x=0)", C became "good enough" and Modula-2's popularity waned.
These days I mostly program in Python and Verilog. I would have even less hair if I had to do my logic in VHDL.
Further reading indicates this is very hard to prosecute, and requires actual attempt at concealment. So, aside from South Carolina or somesuch, you appear to be right :)
Misprision of felonies"
Standing up against the tactical thuggery of an organization which purports to represent the "recording industry" is not at all the same as being "anti-recording industry."
Even though you don't plan on turning this into a real patent application, it will establish a baseline date AT THE PATENT OFFICE for your invention. Someone else would have to prove that they invented before that date.
You will certainly want to publicize it widely, for it to count as prior art, but having an official date from the patent office itself couldn't hurt.
In real life, people who steal credit card numbers, if caught, are sent to jail. This is true even in cases where there has not yet been any monetary theft via the credit card numbers, because the law assumes that the only reason someone would have credit card details is to misuse them.
Now you could argue that the whole rest of the post was about "in this case, their identity," but it reads as if that's a subordinate clause, and in the next sentence, "that secret" is, to this reader's eyes, deliberately general. If he'd meant "identity" he would have said "identity." Taken in context, the casual reader could very easily think that "I'd say they don't." applies to any secret (since that post was in reply to one making a point about secrets in general, and then that casual reader could make a post asking the obvious question about credit card numbers, and then get replied to and modded as a troll by some even more casual readers who can't follow threads properly, and who when called out out it, infallibly mark the specific, subordinate clause in a post as the most important text ever in the whole wide word. (tm)
You didn't read the parent to my post very carefully, then. He was referring to a lot more than just my name.
So it's OK for my waiter to post my credit card details on the internet?