Neil Steiner wrote:
> > Is the source code available anywhere?
>
> Phil and I have already taken this discussion offline.  If others are
> interested, I suspect that if you just want to see the code, you
> probably will not find it available.  If you are interested in actively
> contributing to the project (and you understand that JHDLBits is simply
> a bridge between JHDL and JBits, along with the potential for
> supplemental JBits-based tools), I can make inquiries on your behalf.
>
> Please note that I do not regularly monitor this group, so if you have
> further questions for me, please contact me directly.
>
> Neil

This is probably the greatest news in a year, assuming all the
components
that Alex's papers described are made available ... especially the ADB
and
Fpga simulator projects.

The big question, is since it was layered on top of JBits, does this
mean that
JBits will now go main stream with ISE as an open source interface? If
so,
celebration time ... and many thanks to the Xilinx team :)

Have fun!
John

Well, Austin asserts he is forwarding this to the legal department. I
hope its to open up the EULA as requested below, so that open source
can thrive in support of Xilinx and it's customers.

>Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 07:48:53 -0800
>From: Austin Lesea <austin.lesea@xilinx.com>
>To: "John L. Bass" <jbass@dmsd.com>
>Subject: Re: Slander?

John,

I have referred this to our legal department.

Austin

In reply to:

>From jbass Fri Jan 27 03:43:03 2006
>To: austin.lesea@xilinx.com
>Subject: Slander?

Hi Austin,

To assert slander without the complete facts, is in itself
slander. If you want to degrade discussions between us in
the public forums, then by all means keep up the personal
attacks and open direct riddicule, which combined with
Peter's transgressions is sure to win Xilinx a LOT of
EX-customers.

Slander \Slan"der\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Slandered; p. pr. &
   vb. n. Slandering.]
   1. To defame; to injure by maliciously uttering a false
      report; to tarnish or impair the reputation of by false
      tales maliciously told or propagated; to calumniate.
      [1913 Webster]

old, but the most current available, even if incorrect because
of your failure to correct the situation is NOT slander. Slander
is your and Peters personal attacks, combined with a presumption of
purposefully withholding information to manipulate the discussion
in a negative way.

Now, I've been very careful to avoid your personal attacks, and
to correct myself publicly when needed.  Your thin skinned and
quick to get pissy reactions are far less than professional for
someone entrusted with public relations contact.

I made some half dozen inquiries into Xilinx from Feb-Apr lobbying
to get JHDLBits released, starting with my local FAE with a direct
on the record request, to support several projects I had going.
On the record, including a non-followup from the local FAE, the
requests and lobbying were ignored. The several off the record
replies where simply not to hold my breath as it would never
happen, citing the unwillingness of Xilinx to open it's IP to
open source and the sensitivity of the bit stream tools tied
into the chip resource data bases.

Xilinx, like it or not, has a strong track record of failing to
provide information in an open and direct way, and failing to follow
up on formal requests. Your and Peter's less than helpful, except
to push sales, appearance on usenet is consistant with that.

As far as my very mild introducing the corporate leach topic,
get used to it ... I actually believe in strong corporate IP
in all forms.  Get with any of the hard core FSF group, and
I'm in comparison a poster card corporate rights advocate.
There are people in the open source community that deeply resent
any and all corporate use for profit of their work after
volunteering to develop it -- and many of them. My little jab
doesn't come close to the anger you will see vent if you
push one of their buttons. Because of that, Xilinx really
does need to work on corporate image, similar to the Sun
approach, to exploit any and all open source contributions
in the best possible light.

Xilinx does need to revisit the exact wording of it's EULA
in relation to XDL, and clear up a landmine that is waiting
when restricted XDL development is merged with GPL source.

Using JHDLBits, FpgaC, and Phil's RubyHDL projects as
examples of open source partnership is likely to develop a
lot of marketing collateral in the younger developer and
engineering community. Being hostile will certainly not.

Each of these projects when they reach maturity, will provide
Xilinx, and it's customers, with substantial resources for
new non-traditional markets.

John

Austin Lesea wrote:
> <eom>

Posting that last known factual data is neither posting false
information,
nor is it malicious intent, nor is it slander:

Slander \Slan"der\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Slandered; p. pr. &
   vb. n. Slandering.]
   1. To defame; to injure by maliciously uttering a false
      report; to tarnish or impair the reputation of by false
      tales maliciously told or propagated; to calumniate.
      [1913 Webster]

as you falsely claimed my sharing factual data, although out of date,
was.

Slander is your and Peters open personal attacks, including the false
claim
of slander.  If you have any proof my intent was other than to be open,
direct,
factual, and accurate, please back up your rediculous claim of slander.
I have
sent you the data to backup my quote stating that Xilinx as of Feb 2005
was
holding up the release of JHDLBits. That was, is, and always will be
factual
data. If you have cause to refute it ... take it up with the original
author, and
cease this unwarranted attack on me.

Please retract your false assertion as it clearly was ment to tarnish
or impair my reputation without any cause or reason in relation to the
JHDLBits team and Xilinx as you openly claimed.

> Is the source code available anywhere?

Phil and I have already taken this discussion offline.  If others are 
interested, I suspect that if you just want to see the code, you 
probably will not find it available.  If you are interested in actively 
contributing to the project (and you understand that JHDLBits is simply 
a bridge between JHDL and JBits, along with the potential for 
supplemental JBits-based tools), I can make inquiries on your behalf.

Please note that I do not regularly monitor this group, so if you have 
further questions for me, please contact me directly.

Neil

<eom>

austin wrote:
> Thank you for setting the record straight.  I am sorry that John
> Lawrence Bass (aka 'toys') has slandered the relationship, and the work
> you did.
>
> I could not reveal the facts, as it would have violated your privacy and
> our agreeements with our research colleagues (which we respect).
>
> Austin

Austin, a lof of these threads have been about open, accurate, and
timely
release of information, and the confusion that is created when that
process
fails. It would not have violated the privacy to simply state that
Xilinx had
in fact provided the JHDLBits team a release on such and such a date,
which
you should have done, rather than letting the discussion degrade.

Without that, older and inaccurate information is in fact, the most
recient,
and only information available.

Neil Steiner wrote:

> As one of the four people who worked on JHDLBits, perhaps I can clear up
> some of the misconceptions in this thread.
>
> 1. JHDLBits was indeed intended to be an open-source project, based upon
> JBits as the bitstream interface.  There was never any actual or
> attempted reverse-engineering, because JBits already gave us the
> necessary bitstream access.
>
> 2. The development team was pretty green, and though we came up with
> some interesting stuff, the project was not robust (lack of
> understanding of how and when to use exceptions, lack of understanding
> of how to use public, private, and protected access, ...).
>
> 3. There was never any effort on the part of Xilinx, legal or otherwise,
> to squash the project.  We simply got to the end of the funding
> agreement, had two people graduate, and another one eventually switch
> departments.  That left me, and I was only involved on the side because
> of my familiarity with JBits and related tools, but I was busy working
> on my own research with its own unrelated funding.
>
> 4. JHDLBits could still be a worthwhile open-source project, although
> it's completely inactive at present, and if somebody with decent
> software engineering skills feels like bringing it up to snuff, your
> contribution would likely be welcomed with open arms.
>
> Neil

Thanks Neil, I certainly stand corrected and the Information I had been
given
last Feburary, including the quote in this threads second post from
another JHDLBits
team member, has obviously been superceeded with your assertion that
Xilinx
is no longer blocking the release ... good news. There are certainly
people to
help you finish this project, if indeed Xilinx has provided written
permission to
take it open source. Clearly the Xilinx staffer that told me that would
never happen
wasn't that clueful about Xilinx's willingness to relax it's license
for your great
project. And that does indeed signal an a different spin on Xilinx and
open source
that is substantially more positive for the future.

If you can transfer the sources to the the sourceforge repository, we
will be very
happy to help you pickup and complete the development. It might be
useful to
also include in that upload a copy of the Xilinx release letter.

I do appologize for the confusion created by the out of date
information that was
given to me, and I passed on.

John

In article <43D97452.9070103@vt.edu>,
Neil Steiner  <neil.steiner@vt.edu> wrote:
>Phil Tomson wrote:
>> In another thread we've been talking about creating some open source tools for 
>> parsing and manipulating XDL.  The motivation being that since bitstreams are 
>> closed, working XDL might just be the next best thing.
>> 
>> But then someone brought up the fate of JHDLBits: apparently the prjoject was 
>> squashed by Xilinx.  Does anyone have any details about what happened?  If 
>> someone succeeded in developing an open source ecosystem of tools built around 
>> XDL, would that project also suffer the same fate?  (It would be nice to know 
>> before investing much time and effort in developing tools around XDL)
>
>As one of the four people who worked on JHDLBits, perhaps I can clear up 
>some of the misconceptions in this thread.
>
>1. JHDLBits was indeed intended to be an open-source project, based upon 
>JBits as the bitstream interface.  There was never any actual or 
>attempted reverse-engineering, because JBits already gave us the 
>necessary bitstream access.
>
>2. The development team was pretty green, and though we came up with 
>some interesting stuff, the project was not robust (lack of 
>understanding of how and when to use exceptions, lack of understanding 
>of how to use public, private, and protected access, ...).
>
>3. There was never any effort on the part of Xilinx, legal or otherwise, 
>to squash the project.  We simply got to the end of the funding 
>agreement, had two people graduate, and another one eventually switch 
>departments.  That left me, and I was only involved on the side because 
>of my familiarity with JBits and related tools, but I was busy working 
>on my own research with its own unrelated funding.
>
>4. JHDLBits could still be a worthwhile open-source project, although 
>it's completely inactive at present, and if somebody with decent 
>software engineering skills feels like bringing it up to snuff, your 
>contribution would likely be welcomed with open arms.
>
>Neil


Neil,

Thanks for clearing this up.

Is the source code available anywhere?


Phil

Neil,

Thank you for setting the record straight.  I am sorry that John 
Lawrence Bass (aka 'toys') has slandered the relationship, and the work 
you did.

I could not reveal the facts, as it would have violated your privacy and 
our agreeements with our research colleagues (which we respect).

Austin

Neil Steiner wrote:

-snip-

> As one of the four people who worked on JHDLBits, perhaps I can clear up 
> some of the misconceptions in this thread.
> 
> 1. JHDLBits was indeed intended to be an open-source project, based upon 
> JBits as the bitstream interface.  There was never any actual or 
> attempted reverse-engineering, because JBits already gave us the 
> necessary bitstream access.
> 
> 2. The development team was pretty green, and though we came up with 
> some interesting stuff, the project was not robust (lack of 
> understanding of how and when to use exceptions, lack of understanding 
> of how to use public, private, and protected access, ...).
> 
> 3. There was never any effort on the part of Xilinx, legal or otherwise, 
> to squash the project.  We simply got to the end of the funding 
> agreement, had two people graduate, and another one eventually switch 
> departments.  That left me, and I was only involved on the side because 
> of my familiarity with JBits and related tools, but I was busy working 
> on my own research with its own unrelated funding.
> 
> 4. JHDLBits could still be a worthwhile open-source project, although 
> it's completely inactive at present, and if somebody with decent 
> software engineering skills feels like bringing it up to snuff, your 
> contribution would likely be welcomed with open arms.

Phil Tomson wrote:
> In another thread we've been talking about creating some open source tools for 
> parsing and manipulating XDL.  The motivation being that since bitstreams are 
> closed, working XDL might just be the next best thing.
> 
> But then someone brought up the fate of JHDLBits: apparently the prjoject was 
> squashed by Xilinx.  Does anyone have any details about what happened?  If 
> someone succeeded in developing an open source ecosystem of tools built around 
> XDL, would that project also suffer the same fate?  (It would be nice to know 
> before investing much time and effort in developing tools around XDL)

As one of the four people who worked on JHDLBits, perhaps I can clear up 
some of the misconceptions in this thread.

1. JHDLBits was indeed intended to be an open-source project, based upon 
JBits as the bitstream interface.  There was never any actual or 
attempted reverse-engineering, because JBits already gave us the 
necessary bitstream access.

2. The development team was pretty green, and though we came up with 
some interesting stuff, the project was not robust (lack of 
understanding of how and when to use exceptions, lack of understanding 
of how to use public, private, and protected access, ...).

3. There was never any effort on the part of Xilinx, legal or otherwise, 
to squash the project.  We simply got to the end of the funding 
agreement, had two people graduate, and another one eventually switch 
departments.  That left me, and I was only involved on the side because 
of my familiarity with JBits and related tools, but I was busy working 
on my own research with its own unrelated funding.

4. JHDLBits could still be a worthwhile open-source project, although 
it's completely inactive at present, and if somebody with decent 
software engineering skills feels like bringing it up to snuff, your 
contribution would likely be welcomed with open arms.

Neil