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    SubjectRe: Dual-Licensing Linux Kernel with GPL V2 and GPL V3
    Date
    On Friday 15 June 2007 01:08, Rob Landley wrote:
    > On Thursday 14 June 2007 07:27:59 Bernd Paysan wrote:
    > > Where is the boundary between hard- and software?
    >
    > Software's the bit that's infinitely replicable at zero cost. Hardware
    > tends not to be.

    There's no "zero cost" for software replication, either. You have to pay for
    your media, even if today's price for a GB harddisk space is just 20
    Euro-cents. You have to pay for your bandwidth (and even if it's a
    flat-rate, the maximum amount of data you can get through is
    bandwidth*(seconds per month) for one month fee). Hardware is replicated as
    well as software, the cost for hardware replication is higher than for
    software replication, because more things are to do. The basical principle
    of producing a CD-ROM and a chip is exactly the same: lithography.
    You "print" it. A decade ago, ES2 had made chips by direct e-beam
    lithography, so the offset of the mask costs were eliminated.

    With an ES2-like process, you could have your "free software CPU", where you
    design modifications yourself, send the file to the fab, and get your
    customized chip back for essentially the same price as a non-customized
    version (supposed all the tool-chain would be free software, and not
    horrible expensive Cadence/Synopsys/Mentor software).

    --
    Bernd Paysan
    "If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself"
    http://www.jwdt.com/~paysan/
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