open source

Adding an Instruction to the GNU Assembler

 in OSSG / OSSG Article / Uncategorized  tagged gnu / open source / risc-v by , , (updated 1274 days ago)

Binutils is a huge piece of code and new users can often feel lost and out of their depth when navigating it alone. To help ease the shock, in this post we’ll look at the very simplest step of adding a new basic instruction to an already defined extension and how to add a corresponding GNU Assembler (GAS) test.

While the examples and files given are all RISC-V specific, the information is transferable to other architecture ports, however tables and structures may differ. More information can be found through the binutils project page.

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FPGA vendor Lattice acknowledges value of open source community

 in Blog / Hardware / OSSG Article / Uncategorized  tagged FPGA / licenses / open source / open source hardware by (updated 1397 days ago)

Many open-source projects target existing, commercial hardware without official support from the hardware vendor. Some of the most famous examples include Linux and the GCC compiler; which all started as third party projects.

These days both of these projects see significant support from large hardware companies and are used as the official tooling for many widely sold products. Both now see significant first-party contributions from hardware vendors.

Over the last three years, I have been part of the community developing open source tooling for field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). These are programmable logic chips with great potential for “post Moore’s law” reconfigurable computing with many promising applications from consumer devices to datacentres.

In general, FPGA companies have not published the low-level details of the devices – unlike CPUs, where the instruction set is almost always public. The expectation is that everyone uses the closed-source vendor-specific toolchain provided.

As a result, to develop a complete open-source flow from design to device programming for most FPGAs, the low-level “bitstream” details must be documented by creating a large number of designs using the vendor-provided tools and examining the output. Claire Wolf did this for the Lattice iCE40 FPGAs five years ago in Project Icestorm. Subsequently, I created open-source documentation for their larger ECP5 FPGAs.

In both cases, combined with the low cost and simplicity of these Lattice parts, these projects have led to popular open-source flows for both devices. From this has sprung a number of open source development boards such as the myStorm BlackIce, icebreaker and ULX3S.

Vendors are now acknowledging the importance of open source

Whilst downloading a newly released Lattice SDK, I found there was a new clause in the license agreement prohibiting this bitstream documentation. Fortunately, this SDK doesn’t directly affect any of the currently supported devices, but it would have become problematic if all their tools sport this license in the future:

e. Licensee shall not distribute, copy, transfer, lend, incorporate, modify, use or sublicense the Software or any Modules for any purpose except as expressly provided herein or as otherwise permitted under relevant law, or in advance by Lattice in writing. In particular, no right is granted hereunder … or (3) for reverse engineering a bit stream format or other signaling protocol of any Lattice Semiconductor Corporation programmable logic device.

Thanks to lobbying from the community, it is great to see that Lattice has shown commitment to open source by promptly removing the clause after being contacted about it, going as far as to publish a message of appreciation for the open-source community on Twitter:

Thanks for pointing out a new bitstream usage restriction in the Lattice Propel license. It is not our intent to hinder open source tools. See https://bit.ly/3eUM3OD re an updated license. We are excited with the open source community’s FPGA achievements and their potential.

https://twitter.com/latticesemi/status/1269115302140231682

This is a risk that Lattice has taken, but it is one that resonates well with the open-source toolchain developers and will hopefully yield good results for them in the future. It also shows the power of a strong open source community to achieve good results from companies and the growing awareness for the open source.

I hope that as time progresses we see more support for open source tools from FPGA vendors, perhaps even reaching a similar point to established open -source software tooling.

David Shah is a self-employed developer working on nextpnr, the open source FPGA place-and-route tool. His previous work also includes Project Trellis, open source bitstream documentation for the Lattice ECP5 FPGAs.

Funding Open Source – Thursday 17 May 2018

 in Uncategorized  tagged funding / open source by (updated 2128 days ago)

An evening meeting, where we will hear three talks on how to fund open source projects and businesses. This is a joint meeting with BCS Entrepreneurs, BCS Young Professionals Group, BCS Women and the UK Open Source Hardware User Group. Venue is the BCS Offices at 5 Southampton St, London WC2E 7HA from 6-8pm.

Registration link: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/open-source-sg-how-to-fund-open-source-projects-and-businesses-registration-45639935275

Each talk will last 30 minutes and include plenty of time for questions. I look forward to seeing you there.

Thinking differently: new approaches to funding the development of open source conservation technologies

Alasdair Davies

An active conservationist and technologist all his working life, Alasdair Davies is combining his two passions with a third – openness – to bring affordable, customizable technology to the field through the Arribada Initiative. As a Shuttleworth Foundation Fellow, he is designing, developing and producing open source conservation technologies in partnership with leading wildlife charities such as WWF and the Zoological Society of London, employing open approaches and licences to drive down costs by introducing new community-based funding models.

Video of Alasdair’s talk on YouTube

Funding open – tactics and stories from civic tech

Irina Bolychevsky

Irina is passionate about products and using technology to make things better. She spent many years working on open data at Open Knowledge as one of the directors and ckan product owner, at web startups, and most recently as a data consultant for W3C, the Open Data Institute and the UK, Dubai and UAE governments. She co-founded redecentralize.org—a project to promote and bring together people working on and interested in decentralised digital technologies.

Video of Irina’s talk on YouTube

Other ways of funding open source

Ben Nickolls

Ben Nickolls is a software developer turned product manager building a sustainable source of funding for open source maintainers at Tidelift. He is an advisor to The Centre for Cultivation of Technology, The Ford Foundation, The Sloan Foundation and helps organise the annual open source sustainability conference Sustain.org and the Core Internet Infrastructure working group. In his spare times he rides bikes, designs boardgames and walks his dog.

Video of Ben’s talk on YouTube

We anticipate this evening may be oversubscribed, so please book promptly. We shall be videoing the talks for later posting on YouTube for those who are unable to make it.

Call for Open Source Project Contest Applications

 in Education / OSSG Article / OSSG News  tagged apprentice project / article / final year project / first year project / open source / school project / second year project / student contest by (updated 1739 days ago)

Code

The BCS OSSG desires to support and encourage students and apprentices to use and develop open source software and hardware in their project work.

All students and apprenticesare invited to enter one of the project contests sponsored by the BCS Open Source Specialist Group. The project contests are as follows:

  • Best school projectfor students who are still at secondary school or sixth form college
  • Best first year projectfor students who are in their first year of study at a UK Higher Education Institution (HEI).
  • Best second year projectfor students in their second year of study at a UK HEI (also those on an industrial year or 3rd year of a 4 year degree – basically this is for students between their first and final years).
  • Best final year undergraduateprojectfor students in their final year of study for a BA, BSc, BEng, or in the penultimate year of an MEng (this will often be the 3rd year, but may be the fourth or fifth year, if the student has taken a year abroad, year in industry, or is studying for a 4 year Scottish degree).
  • Best apprentice projectcompleted by an apprentice working in a UK company on an approved apprenticeship scheme.

The winner in each category will be awarded a cash prize of 100;application must be submitted by 15thAugust 2016.

More information at https://ossg.bcs.org/student-project-2016.

maddog at Birmingham City University

 in Education / Knowledge / OSSG Events  tagged Linux / LPI / open source / OSS by (updated 4084 days ago)

Hear maddog talk at Birmingham City University about “Making and Saving Money with Free Software and Open Hardware” – There is much confusion about how people can make or save money with Free Software. As it turns out, there are more ways that people can make money with Free Software than there are with closed source, proprietary software.  This talk illustrates some of those ways, how to formulate a business plan around Free Software and how to avoid traps that make unprofitable companies.

Register for your tickets at: http://lpi-uk.eventbrite.co.uk/

Jon “maddog” Hall is the Executive Director of Linux International (www.li.org), an association of computer users who wish to support and promote the Linux Operating System. During his career in commercial computing which started in 1969, Mr. Hall has been a programmer, systems designer, systems administrator, product manager, technical marketing manager, author and educator.

He has worked for such companies as Western Electric Corporation, Aetna Life and Casualty, Bell Laboratories, Digital Equipment Corporation, VA Linux Systems, and SGI. He currently works as an independent consultant, and is currently involved with bringing environmentally friendly computing to emerging marketplaces through Project Cauã (www.projectcaua.org), as well as consulting for Futura Networks, the parent company of Campus-Party.org

Mr Hall has worked on many systems, both proprietary and open, having concentrated on Unix systems since 1980 and Linux systems since 1994, when he first met Linus Torvalds and correctly recognized the commercial importance of Linux and Free and Open Source Software.

He has taught at Hartford State Technical College (HSTC), Merrimack College and Daniel Webster College. While at HSTC his students gave him the nickname of “maddog”.

Mr. Hall is the author of numerous magazine and newspaper articles, many presentations and one book, “Linux for Dummies”.

Mr. Hall has consulted with the governments of China, Malaysia and Brasil as well as the United Nations and many local and state governments on the use of Free and Open Source Software.

Mr. Hall serves on the boards of several companies, and several non-profit organizations.

Mr. Hall has traveled the world speaking on the benefits of Open Source Software having received his BS in Commerce and Engineering from Drexel University, and his MSCS from RPI in Troy, New York.

Discovering Open Source ERP (24th August 2009)

 in Business / External Events / OSSG Committee / OSSG Events  tagged ERP / open source by (updated 3338 days ago)

Objective: Introduce participants to Open Source ERP solutions, compare Open Source and Proprietary ERP, discover how to implement Open Source ERP, review case studies and learn how to evaluate ERP for your organisation.
Date: Monday, 24 August 2009 – 0930 – 1600 (lunch included)
Venue: British Computer Society, First Floor, The Davidson Building, 5 Southampton Street, London, WC2E 7HA
Cost: £65 Non Members, £55 Members

Agenda:

– What are the features that make an ERP?
– What is open source?
– Review of the leading open source ERP solutions
– Analysis of the ERP solution marketplace (open source & proprietary)
– What to look for in an open source ERP product
– Tour of an open source ERP
– Implementing open source ERP
– Managing ERP implementation
– Features of a typical open source ERP adopter
– Case studies
– ERP and the business eco-system
– Q&A
– Close

Presenter Profiles:

Michael Judd is an Accountant and has held roles such as European Financial Controller and Manager of Global Financial Systems in FTSE 100 businesses before entering consulting in 2002.  Michael has worked with Cable & Wireless, Barclays Bank, British Telecom and many medium sized organisations to deliver process efficiencies and better leverage ICT platforms. Michael is a specialist in designing & implementing business eco-systems based on open source platforms.  Michael is a Director of Akuna Ltd, a business consultancy leading the UK in leveraging professional open source technology.

Web: www.akunagroup.com

Norbert Wessel is CEO of metas, Germanys leading ADempiere ERP Implementor and co-founder of the German ADempiere society where he serves the board. Norbert has presented at major events like Cebit, Linuxtag (Germany), OpenExpo (Switzerland), Profoss (Brussels) and others.

Web: www.metas.de

How to Join:

To join the conference or for more information please contact Michael Judd on 08444 84 3590 or via this form.