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Open Source Blog
How open is open?
April 13, 2006
Andy Updegrove has an interesting article on the ConsortiumInfo.org standards blog about the differences between IBM and Sun's plans to open up their processor and hardware architectures, examining "what does 'open' mean in the context of hardware?"
IBM's Power.org project and Sun's OpenSparc may have similar goals, but the route to those goals is very different.
"You have to pay to participate meaningfully in Power.org, as well as pay royalties to implement - it's built on a traditional RAND consortium model. To use the Sun code, though, its just download the code under an open source license, and you're good to go to use anything except the SPARC name," explains Updegrove.
It's early days for both projects - and for open source hardware specifications - and as Updegrove comments, it will be interesting to see which approach takes off in terms of developers and users. Andy has done a great job in tracking the adoption of the OpenDocument Format by Massachusetts, and it will be worth checking back to get Andy's take on Power.org and OpenSparc.
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