[Libre-soc-dev] Request for payment for 2021-02-052: The Libre-SOC Gigabit Router

[Michiel Leenaars]

Dear Luke,

the statement I refer to comes from the first paragraph of the second of the two links you provided as a clarification. And given that that was all you provided, and it involved text written by you yourself, I guess sufficient context is appreciated on both ends. Please provide sufficient context when clarifying the other outstanding issues.

An instruction set that is somehow patent-encumbered (or even just not-sufficiently-cleared-from-suspicion-there-might-be-unresolved-patents) is unlikely to see any meaningful market adoption, certainly not in markets rife with frivolous software patents (e.g. the USA). There is a reason companies like Qualcomm employ vast amounts of lawyers to stay on top of the chip market. However, this is indeed a longer term problem you can leave open for any potential users to solve. Another option is to just sit out any patents, time flies.

If you believe this issue is under control, that is fine. At least your position is now publicly documented, and anyone can make up their own mind. We have done our duty and flagged the issue, we'll leave this up to you to deal with the situation. After all, you are responsible for making sure the results of your work and the work of your team members can benefit the community in the best possible way, and serving the patent litigation apparatus probably isn't what you want either.

Best,
Michiel

>as per the transparency commitment set seven years ago at
>the very begiining of this project, and kept to strictly under the
>dangerously unsafe circumstances imposed:  the answer is provided
>publicly on the bugtracker under bug #771
>
>https://bugs.libre-soc.org/show_bug.cgi?id=771#c3