On Fri, Sep 09, 2011 at 12:32:25AM +0200, ropers wrote: > I have for some time quite covetously looked at hardware for this: > <http://www.openbsd.org/loongson.html> (and at the Lemote Yeeloong > netbook in particular). But I could never really afford new kit, so I > still haven't bought any loongson hardware. But I'm still thinking > about it. > > The big draw for me was the reported complete open-source-ness and > unencumbered-ness of the whole hardware platform. > > Now I'm reading at Wikipedia that the Chinese have supposedly caved > and coughed up some protection money to one or the other US > "Intellectual Property" (haha) shakedown scheme or entity: > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson#MIPS_patent_issues > > So does this mean that this platform is now to be regarded as > patent-encumbered and no longer completely free (libre)? > (That would kind of ruin the big appeal for me.) > > Thoughts? > > regards, > --ropers >
Yeah, it's non-free and you don't even get all the VHDL files for the chips. Now please go and continue your whining on the FSF or gNewSense mailinglists, it has absolutly no place here.
