ldeveraux wrote:NormalFish wrote:ldeveraux wrote:Why does it seem like you're trying to get information from the 3 other major device creators to make your own device to compete with? Why would anyone share that information if you're just using it to cut into their profits?
Open Source Scan Converter thread.
The open source concept is typically appropriate for software, not hardware. Even so, there's nothing open source with the Morph he's also trying to ape.
I disagree with you, open source works very well for hardware too. it is just you can't copy a board in your hand but rather its design. I suggest you check open hardware EEVBlog video.
On the side of questions, even if it is open source or not, asking fellow engineers design questions is totally ok and nothing is ever wrong in that. be it direct or indirect doesn't matter. if someone doesn't want to answer such questions, it is ok too. but to blame someone for learning and collecting valuable info is just not proper. Just go and hangout in EEVBlog forums and see that there are dedicated forums and sub-forums for design discussions between everyone and in details! this is not something new or odd at all. no one wonder or find it inappropriate that engineers and designers ask such questions to each other
GPL 3.0 is a copyleft viral licence. If you openly borrow from a GPL 3.0 project, your project must also be open source under GPL 3.0. Mind the details and the agreement. It's not MIT. Obviously, if you're poking around in someone's repo for breadcrumbs, you wouldn't go round telling the world about it.
With all respect to you, but you are mistaken, and by a big amount.
copyleft and open licenses are applicable the way you described only if you quote the entire design and made your own version of it, or improved it, or made v2...etc. However, taking design ideas or benefit from it or anything similar doesn't force you to share it in the same license!
for example: if I lurk in ossc repo and then download all the design files... spend 1 year enhancing it and created OSSC 2. Now OSSC 2 must be open source with the same license.
While if I studied the design and saw how he implemented video decoding and I liked it, then I can use the same idea or idea inspired by it in my design without the need to share the entire design using the same license. Grey area between the two is also very well there.
one final note about license costs: for a long time i didn't think there is any money to be paid for hdmi and didn't know hdcp existed. However, when i started digging into it I saw that there are annual payments which are not small. therefore, I saw a video showing ossc with DVI to avoid HDMI licensing fees, but later on it became with HDMI. Other retro products using HDMI as well... so I wondered if these guys, single engineers, one-man band actually paying for all that!? or is there another way or "glitch" they are using to avoid it.
First I chose certain HDMI capable ICs which should work straight out of the box but later on I found that I need to pay a lot to be able to use them, I didn't really expect that or to that degree.
Then I started contacting lots of IC manufacturers to search for ICs which can do DP 1.2 instead of HDMI due to licensing... it is very tiring and frustrating. hdcp and hdmi people are so bad since they kinda rule all IC manufacturers to their liking and prevent them from sharing or selling their IC but to adopters...etc.