[libre-riscv-dev] PowerISA, NLNet grants

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

On Sat, Jan 18, 2020 at 9:15 PM <whygee at f-cpu.org> wrote:


> > (yet). As the Risc-V foundation makes sure the ABI is free of any known
> > patents they can't forbid you to have a design which is compatible with
> > it, they can only forbid you to use the Risc-V name.
>
> That's my point :-)
>
> What matters is the ISA/ABI, they say it very clearly in the
> conferences.
> They want everybody to use it, right ?
> And for now we're "only doing a research project" after all.
>

no, we are a commercial project with the goal to reach 100 million units
and above.

how can we reach 100 million units when we cannot even use the RISC-V name
because the RISC-V Foundation fails to acknowledge reasonable requests for
inclusion, under Trademark Law?

what do you think the consequences would be of going to market, having
massive world-wide adoption, with "custom" instructions where OTHER VENDORS
clash with those exact same custom instructions?


> So do we all agree that the trademark is not a real problem ? :-)
>

not in the least, whygee.  as a Certification Mark Holder i had to research
this, and i can tell you, right now, the RISC-V Foundation's intransigence
is a serious problem.

l.