On Mon, Jun 23, 2008 at 10:17 AM, Mike <
mustamike@...> wrote:
> Sun has opensourced its software and Spolsky mentioned that was a tactic to
> sell hardware but Sun has now opensourced its hardware (chip architecture?)
> and I don't think there's a lot of money to be made in tech support now that
> there are forums for every conceivable problem.
Even if Sun open sourced their UltraSPARC processors, how many
organizations are capable of fabricating UltraSPARC processors? Maybe
the only ones who are capable of doing that are the ones contracted by
Sun to manufacture those processors. Even Intel and AMD won't be able
to manufacture UltraSPARC processors without months or even years of
calibrating their own processor fabrication facilities. And the
UltraSPARC/OpenSPARC might have some patents that require licensing
from Sun if you're going to use the tech on non-OpenSPARC procssors.
The only reason you want to open source your hardware is to encourage
software vendors to write software (including new operating systems)
and software development tools (compilers, etc) that take full
advantage of the features of your processor.
--
Gideon N. Guillen
gideong@...
