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Would A Kickstarter Open-Source GPU Work?

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  • An Update

    Hi All,
    I just wanted to post an update. We should be going live with the kickstarter this week/ next week. We tried to structure it so that we can attain enough to finish the IP (It's about 95% there as I'll show in the video). We've been actively debugging over the last 2 months and need to fix trilinear filtering to get a better video for showing the capabilities. We also need to work on some of the more esoteric tests to verify functionality that isn't currently used.

    Our hope is to achieve the higher tiers where we can actually bring the capabilities up to a modern shader architecture. Our current capabilities are more than enough to run an OS such as Linux and have game capabilities about that of a gamecube.

    I'll start a new thread in the next couple of days with our Facebook page and an announcement of when we will go live. If anyone has any media contacts or thoughts on spreading the word, I'd love to hear them.

    Our licensing is going to be attribution and bug fix only. New derivatives simply need to give us credit and our backers by providing a reference to our website and where an end user can obtain the source. It would be great to see someone pair this with an OpenRisc or OpenSparc. It might be a follow on kickstarter...

    Thanks for your patience,
    Frank

    Comment


    • Originally posted by fbruno View Post
      An Update

      Hi All,
      I just wanted to post an update. We should be going live with the kickstarter this week/ next week. We tried to structure it so that we can attain enough to finish the IP (It's about 95% there as I'll show in the video). We've been actively debugging over the last 2 months and need to fix trilinear filtering to get a better video for showing the capabilities. We also need to work on some of the more esoteric tests to verify functionality that isn't currently used.

      Our hope is to achieve the higher tiers where we can actually bring the capabilities up to a modern shader architecture. Our current capabilities are more than enough to run an OS such as Linux and have game capabilities about that of a gamecube.

      I'll start a new thread in the next couple of days with our Facebook page and an announcement of when we will go live. If anyone has any media contacts or thoughts on spreading the word, I'd love to hear them.

      Our licensing is going to be attribution and bug fix only. New derivatives simply need to give us credit and our backers by providing a reference to our website and where an end user can obtain the source. It would be great to see someone pair this with an OpenRisc or OpenSparc. It might be a follow on kickstarter...

      Thanks for your patience,
      Frank
      First off its great to hear you are going ahead with this. Secondly I don't have any media contacts but I did recently run a small (but successful) campaign to do some development work on Mesa. Some places I would recommend sharing news of you campaign are:

      - Phoronix (obviously)
      - Reddit Linux - http://www.reddit.com/r/linux
      - http://www.geeks3d.com/
      - Once you have something posted on a website the linux news websites like www.linuxtoday.com and www.lxer.com are good for driving traffic
      - http://www.gamingonlinux.com/ a popular linux gaming site but they let you submit guest posts so you may like to write something here.

      Comment


      • Honestly now that linux is getting more support for gaming i would like to see support for Haiku OS, since its a unique OS made for multimedia it would be kinda nice! the open source driver must be platform independent for its core functions kinda like how Nvidia did for its close sourced driver to have a better cross-platform features support.

        Comment


        • Originally posted by Setlec View Post
          Honestly now that linux is getting more support for gaming i would like to see support for Haiku OS, since its a unique OS made for multimedia it would be kinda nice! the open source driver must be platform independent for its core functions kinda like how Nvidia did for its close sourced driver to have a better cross-platform features support.
          This project goes beyond drivers, unlike many other "open hardware" projects. The GPU can be poked, modified, improved upon. The source code that builds the logic that becomes the GPU is all in standard Verilog. There is nothing obfuscated or hidden, variables have meanings, comments are there in many places and part of the cleanup prior to release will be to add more.

          The community will be free to develop drivers for any OS.

          Comment


          • well then i guess that you just won a future backer. ;D

            Comment


            • Originally posted by fbruno View Post
              An Update
              Our licensing is going to be attribution and bug fix only. New derivatives simply need to give us credit and our backers by providing a reference to our website and where an end user can obtain the source. It would be great to see someone pair this with an OpenRisc or OpenSparc.
              fbruno, hi,

              it's fantastic to see this effort, and i wish you every success. i must warn you however that if you intend to use an attribution-based license, these are completely incompatible with the GPL and the LGPL, due to the attribution being "advertising". forcing people to "advertise" is an "obligation" which falls foul of the clauses which force people wishing to combine the two codebases to cease and desist from using the GPL/LGPL'd code because they cannot fulfil the requirements of the GPL/LGPL... thus completely defeating the object of combining the two codebases.

              bottom line: if you insist on releasing under and attribution-based license, you will *not* see anyone using this GPU with OpenRisc or OpenSparc. both are released under the LGPL.

              please consider taking some advice from people who know about software libre licenses before proceeding further with this decision. at the very least i strongly recommend to you to release the code under the LGPLv2+ because it creates a stand-alone product that requires modifications to be made publicly available under the same license. LGPLv2+ code can be used with absolutely anything.

              also, from experience, i strongly recommend that you obtain a Copyright Registration Certificate for the product in the United States. this can be obtained from any Town Hall in any city in the USA. even if you are not based in the USA i strongly recommend that you consider obtaining a Copyright Registration Certificate.

              l.

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