So what happened to JHDLBits?

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

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