[Coco] FPGA 63x09

[Jeff Teunissen]

jdaggett at gate.net wrote:
> good grief. Unless you are a lawyer giving me free advice then I may 
> consider what you have stated. As I have declared before I do not care to 
> get into a debate on copyright laws here. Been there and have done that 
> before on this forum. 

Look, I'll break this down for you real quick. You have several choices, as
you have already outlined before. One of which is a freely available,
modifiable, and redistributable package that anyone can use (but which you
don't like), and another where the owner says "YOU CANNOT DO THIS".

You can start from scratch, rewrite somebody else's code legally, or rip
someone off; and your statement is that you would rather rip someone off than
do something properly, because the code you want to rip off is in a style you
like better than another one.

This isn't even a copyright debate, it's just a big "fuck you" to both the
guys at Green Mountain who lets you make your own products using their IP
core, and the numerous guys out there (like whats-his-name who did the 6809
core used in the FPGA CoCo project) who actually DO create IP cores that are
freely available (unlike GM's) for projects like you're planning.

Even ignoring copyright, the Green Mountain guys laid it out plainly that as a
condition of your own use of the IP core, you aren't allowed to give it to
anyone else---only to deploy it (modified or not) in product form. Even if it
were not framed in terms of copyright, it's a breach of contract. The only
reason you are allowed to use the damn thing at all is because of those
conditions, which you would be breaking.

Even things like NitrOS-9 exist in SOME sort of gray area, while you're
basically telling GM to go screw themselves in punishment for their own good
deeds.