Linux on Microblaze

[maxascent]

I am looking to get started with Linux on a Microblaze. There seems to be
few companies out there doing it and Xilinx has a Wiki site. What exactl
is the difference between the Xilinx and the others. Presumably you have t
pay for the others, although I thought Linux was supposed to be free. So
would of thought I should be able to get hold of the source even if I don
get any support.

Any thoughts would be helpful

Thanks

Jon



---------------------------------------
Posted through http://www.FPGARelated.com

 

[Tim Wescott]

On 12/06/2010 09:01 AM, d_s_klein wrote:

On Dec 6, 7:00 am, "maxascent"
maxascent@n_o_s_p_a_m.n_o_s_p_a_m.yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
I am looking to get started with Linux on a Microblaze. There seems to be a
few companies out there doing it and Xilinx has a Wiki site. What exactly
is the difference between the Xilinx and the others. Presumably you have to
pay for the others, although I thought Linux was supposed to be free. So I
would of thought I should be able to get hold of the source even if I dont
get any support.

Any thoughts would be helpful

Thanks

Jon

---------------------------------------
Posted throughhttp://www.FPGARelated.com

You're not paying for The Kernel, you're paying for the effort of
porting it. Most (all?) GPL flavors allow compensation for effort.

Could you please cite chapter and verse? That's 180 degrees out from
what I read the last time I went over a GPL in its entirety. Per the
GPL, if you distribute the software in any way shape or form it has to
be free, and you have to distribute source code.

The way people make money on this stuff is by never documenting it well,
and offering consulting and/or training services. Or if it's a more
widely available product (like a desktop OS) they'll document it well
enough that an individual will like it, then offer consulting for the
corporate user.

Bottom line: the software has to be free, but it doesn't have to be
easy. The marketplace has evolved various means to allow individuals
and companies to make money off the "doesn't have to be easy" part.

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

Do you need to implement control loops in software?
"Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems" was written for you.
See details at http://www.wescottdesign.com/actfes/actfes.html

 

[d_s_klein]

On Dec 6, 7:00 am, "maxascent"
<maxascent@n_o_s_p_a_m.n_o_s_p_a_m.yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

I am looking to get started with Linux on a Microblaze. There seems to be a
few companies out there doing it and Xilinx has a Wiki site. What exactly
is the difference between the Xilinx and the others. Presumably you have to
pay for the others, although I thought Linux was supposed to be free. So I
would of thought I should be able to get hold of the source even if I dont
get any support.

Any thoughts would be helpful

Thanks

Jon

---------------------------------------        
Posted throughhttp://www.FPGARelated.com

You're not paying for The Kernel, you're paying for the effort of
porting it. Most (all?) GPL flavors allow compensation for effort.

What I remember from the last time I tried the Xilinx app notes is
that the Xilinx version was both PPC and NLA.

There are sources out there for free, and perhaps a bootable image or
two. Most of what I have seen are uClinux variants; every one I found
stopped being updated after the creator graduated from school.

And don't be too surprised if what's out there is completely
incompatible with your hardware (the joys of a soft processor).

RK

 

[Nico Coesel]

d_s_klein <d_s_klein@yahoo.com> wrote:

On Dec 6, 9:18=A0am, Tim Wescott <t...@seemywebsite.com> wrote:

Could you please cite chapter and verse?
--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Serviceshttp://www.wescottdesign.com


According to gnu.org: "Many people believe that the spirit of the GNU
Project is that you should not charge money for distributing copies of
software, or that you should charge as little as possible =97 just
enough to cover the cost. This is a misunderstanding."

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html

The free market principle says that people will get something from the
cheapest source. In this case: they download from internet. Tim
Wescott's post is spot on!

--
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
--------------------------------------------------------------

 

[d_s_klein]

On Dec 6, 9:18 am, Tim Wescott <t...@seemywebsite.com> wrote:

Could you please cite chapter and verse?
--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Serviceshttp://www.wescottdesign.com

According to gnu.org: "Many people believe that the spirit of the GNU
Project is that you should not charge money for distributing copies of
software, or that you should charge as little as possible — just
enough to cover the cost. This is a misunderstanding."

<http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html>

 

[Tim Wescott]

On 12/06/2010 01:43 PM, d_s_klein wrote:

On Dec 6, 9:18 am, Tim Wescott<t...@seemywebsite.com> wrote:

Could you please cite chapter and verse?
--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Serviceshttp://www.wescottdesign.com


According to gnu.org: "Many people believe that the spirit of the GNU
Project is that you should not charge money for distributing copies of
software, or that you should charge as little as possible — just
enough to cover the cost. This is a misunderstanding."

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html

I think you're correct in the details, but still off in the main point.
You can sell me some GPL-ed software, but you can't keep me from
turning around and posting it on my website for free. So, sooner or
later, if there's much interest in the stuff at all, it'll turn up for free.

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

Do you need to implement control loops in software?
"Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems" was written for you.
See details at http://www.wescottdesign.com/actfes/actfes.html

 

[Rob Gaddi]

On 12/6/2010 2:39 PM, Nico Coesel wrote:

d_s_klein<d_s_klein@yahoo.com> wrote:

On Dec 6, 9:18=A0am, Tim Wescott<t...@seemywebsite.com> wrote:

Could you please cite chapter and verse?
--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Serviceshttp://www.wescottdesign.com


According to gnu.org: "Many people believe that the spirit of the GNU
Project is that you should not charge money for distributing copies of
software, or that you should charge as little as possible =97 just
enough to cover the cost. This is a misunderstanding."

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html

The free market principle says that people will get something from the
cheapest source. In this case: they download from internet. Tim
Wescott's post is spot on!

This assumes your time is free. Timesys, Montavista, Wind River, and
many others seem to stay entirely in business by convincing folks that
their time is worth more than the cost for their Linux ports/BSPs, etc.

--
Rob Gaddi, Highland Technology
Email address is currently out of order

 

[David Brown]

On 06/12/2010 23:58, Tim Wescott wrote:

On 12/06/2010 01:43 PM, d_s_klein wrote:
On Dec 6, 9:18 am, Tim Wescott<t...@seemywebsite.com> wrote:

Could you please cite chapter and verse?
--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Serviceshttp://www.wescottdesign.com


According to gnu.org: "Many people believe that the spirit of the GNU
Project is that you should not charge money for distributing copies of
software, or that you should charge as little as possible — just
enough to cover the cost. This is a misunderstanding."

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html

I think you're correct in the details, but still off in the main point.
You can sell me some GPL-ed software, but you can't keep me from turning
around and posting it on my website for free. So, sooner or later, if
there's much interest in the stuff at all, it'll turn up for free.

It is perfectly legal to charge for GPL'ed software (though you can only
charge someone a reasonable handling fee for the source code once you
have sold/given them a binary). And once you have the software, you can
then give it away to anyone you want. That much is all true.

But there may be additional issues in hand, such as trademarks. For
example, (almost) all of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is GPL'ed. You can
buy RHEL, and you can distribute the packages for free (or you can
download the packages for free from Red Hat). But you can't
re-distribute the entire system without infringing on Red Hat's
trademarks. Thus CentOS (and Oracle, and Scientific Linux) take RHEL,
remove all Red Hat's trademarks, perhaps make a few other minor changes,
and distribute the code.

Most GPL'ed software that is popular is already given out for free - any
charges are typically for additional non-GPL software, documentation,
support services, etc. More specialised software, such as Wind River's
Linux packages, may well only be available for a fee. Once you've paid
the fee and got the binary and source code, you can then publish it for
free on your website. But would you do that, with software you've paid
good money for? And would anyone download it for you, rather than
getting up-to-date and supported packages from the original site?

There are many people that make money from providing or selling GPL
software, and they do it by providing it as professional-level software
including documentation and support. It is almost invariably zero-price
software that has poor documentation - after all, few people /like/
writing documentation, so they'll only do it if they get paid to do it.

 

[Alessandro Basili]

On 12/6/2010 6:18 PM, Tim Wescott wrote:

On 12/06/2010 09:01 AM, d_s_klein wrote:
On Dec 6, 7:00 am, "maxascent"
maxascent@n_o_s_p_a_m.n_o_s_p_a_m.yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
I am looking to get started with Linux on a Microblaze. There seems
to be a
few companies out there doing it and Xilinx has a Wiki site. What
exactly
is the difference between the Xilinx and the others. Presumably you
have to
pay for the others, although I thought Linux was supposed to be free.
So I
would of thought I should be able to get hold of the source even if I
dont
get any support.

Any thoughts would be helpful

Thanks

Jon

---------------------------------------
Posted throughhttp://www.FPGARelated.com

You're not paying for The Kernel, you're paying for the effort of
porting it. Most (all?) GPL flavors allow compensation for effort.

Could you please cite chapter and verse? That's 180 degrees out from
what I read the last time I went over a GPL in its entirety. Per the
GPL, if you distribute the software in any way shape or form it has to
be free, and you have to distribute source code.

I don't quite understand why people tend to mix "free" and "free of
charge". There is no place in the GPL where it is stated the software
has to be free of charge.
From http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html you can read:

"Preamble

The GNU General Public License is a free, copyleft license for software
and other kinds of works.

The licenses for most software and other practical works are designed to
take away your freedom to share and change the works. By contrast, the
GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to
share and change all versions of a program--to make sure it remains free
software for all its users. "

GPL license is a copyleft type of license (viral license) that enforce
the freedom under which the piece of software was created, freedom to
change it and freedom to share it. This has nothing to do with money.

The way people make money on this stuff is by never documenting it well,
and offering consulting and/or training services. Or if it's a more
widely available product (like a desktop OS) they'll document it well
enough that an individual will like it, then offer consulting for the
corporate user.

Most of the success Linux has achieved is because it is not only very
well documented, but also because anyone has the chance to improve the
documentation (and implementation) making it a better system.
Very well documented system doesn't mean anyone can install it on a
blade server in a farm cluster and make it work out of the box. That is
why most of the companies dealing with Linux sell services, not products.

Al

 

[2cents]

On Dec 6, 10:58 pm, Tim Wescott <t...@seemywebsite.com> wrote:

On 12/06/2010 01:43 PM, d_s_klein wrote:

On Dec 6, 9:18 am, Tim Wescott<t...@seemywebsite.com>  wrote:

Could you please cite chapter and verse?
--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Serviceshttp://www.wescottdesign.com

According to gnu.org:  "Many people believe that the spirit of the GNU
Project is that you should not charge money for distributing copies of
software, or that you should charge as little as possible just
enough to cover the cost. This is a misunderstanding."

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html

I think you're correct in the details, but still off in the main point.
  You can sell me some GPL-ed software, but you can't keep me from
turning around and posting it on my website for free.  So, sooner or
later, if there's much interest in the stuff at all, it'll turn up for free.

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Serviceshttp://www.wescottdesign.com

Do you need to implement control loops in software?
"Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems" was written for you.
See details athttp://www.wescottdesign.com/actfes/actfes.html

Petalogix of PetaLinux fame is one company who specialize in Linux on
Microblaze.
The offer free downloads of their software, and have put a lot of work
into getting microblaze supported (to the point that it is now in the
kernel mainline, instead of the uclinux branch)
AFAIK you can also pay for a premimum distribution, which comes
bundled with a lot more custom-written (by them) scripts and utilities
to make your life a lot easier in getting it running on YOUR board -
like scripts that convert the EDK mhs/mss files into kernel
configurations automatically, for example.

So everything GPLed that they touch is freely available, and in the
linux kernel mainline, but that doesn't mean you get everything they
have built around it that that makes building the complete hw-to-sw
system for free (unless you are a student, in which case you can get
it, I think)

 

[Tim Wescott]

On 12/07/2010 04:11 AM, David Brown wrote:

On 06/12/2010 23:58, Tim Wescott wrote:
On 12/06/2010 01:43 PM, d_s_klein wrote:
On Dec 6, 9:18 am, Tim Wescott<t...@seemywebsite.com> wrote:

Could you please cite chapter and verse?
--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Serviceshttp://www.wescottdesign.com


According to gnu.org: "Many people believe that the spirit of the GNU
Project is that you should not charge money for distributing copies of
software, or that you should charge as little as possible — just
enough to cover the cost. This is a misunderstanding."

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html

I think you're correct in the details, but still off in the main point.
You can sell me some GPL-ed software, but you can't keep me from turning
around and posting it on my website for free. So, sooner or later, if
there's much interest in the stuff at all, it'll turn up for free.


It is perfectly legal to charge for GPL'ed software (though you can only
charge someone a reasonable handling fee for the source code once you
have sold/given them a binary). And once you have the software, you can
then give it away to anyone you want. That much is all true.

But there may be additional issues in hand, such as trademarks. For
example, (almost) all of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is GPL'ed. You can buy
RHEL, and you can distribute the packages for free (or you can download
the packages for free from Red Hat). But you can't re-distribute the
entire system without infringing on Red Hat's trademarks. Thus CentOS
(and Oracle, and Scientific Linux) take RHEL, remove all Red Hat's
trademarks, perhaps make a few other minor changes, and distribute the
code.

Most GPL'ed software that is popular is already given out for free - any
charges are typically for additional non-GPL software, documentation,
support services, etc. More specialised software, such as Wind River's
Linux packages, may well only be available for a fee. Once you've paid
the fee and got the binary and source code, you can then publish it for
free on your website. But would you do that, with software you've paid
good money for? And would anyone download it for you, rather than
getting up-to-date and supported packages from the original site?

There are many people that make money from providing or selling GPL
software, and they do it by providing it as professional-level software
including documentation and support. It is almost invariably zero-price
software that has poor documentation - after all, few people /like/
writing documentation, so they'll only do it if they get paid to do it.

Well, that was my point -- if you're going to make money off of GPL'd
software, you're going to sell services, and give the software away for
free. The "value for money" proposition isn't a bunch of software with
elaborate copy protection -- the "value for money" proposition is that
when one of the customer's people calls needing help, he gets it _right
now_.

If you're going to _pay_ money for GPL'd software, the obvious obverse
applies.

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

Do you need to implement control loops in software?
"Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems" was written for you.
See details at http://www.wescottdesign.com/actfes/actfes.html

 

[Nico Coesel]

Rob Gaddi <rgaddi@technologyhighland.com> wrote:

On 12/6/2010 2:39 PM, Nico Coesel wrote:
d_s_klein<d_s_klein@yahoo.com> wrote:

On Dec 6, 9:18=A0am, Tim Wescott<t...@seemywebsite.com> wrote:

Could you please cite chapter and verse?
--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Serviceshttp://www.wescottdesign.com


According to gnu.org: "Many people believe that the spirit of the GNU
Project is that you should not charge money for distributing copies of
software, or that you should charge as little as possible =97 just
enough to cover the cost. This is a misunderstanding."

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html

The free market principle says that people will get something from the
cheapest source. In this case: they download from internet. Tim
Wescott's post is spot on!


This assumes your time is free. Timesys, Montavista, Wind River, and
many others seem to stay entirely in business by convincing folks that
their time is worth more than the cost for their Linux ports/BSPs, etc.

You could turn that around: if you know your limitations then you hire
an expert. I'm also in the business of getting Linux going on embedded
platforms.

--
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
--------------------------------------------------------------

 

[Sebastien Bourdeauducq]

On 7 déc, 18:13, Tim Wescott <t...@seemywebsite.com> wrote:

Well, that was my point -- if you're going to make money off of GPL'd
software, you're going to sell services, and give the software away for
free.

Which has the perverse effect of giving an incentive for free software
service companies to write obscure and poorly documented code, so they
can stay in business. See for example what Codesourcery does.

 

[David Brown]

On 07/12/2010 21:45, Sebastien Bourdeauducq wrote:

On 7 déc, 18:13, Tim Wescott<t...@seemywebsite.com> wrote:
Well, that was my point -- if you're going to make money off of GPL'd
software, you're going to sell services, and give the software away for
free.

Which has the perverse effect of giving an incentive for free software
service companies to write obscure and poorly documented code, so they
can stay in business. See for example what Codesourcery does.

I think that is quite simply incorrect. Companies that intend to make
money from code - free or otherwise - usually aim to be as professional
about it as they can.

Codesourcery does not write "obscure and poorly documented" code - at
least, not gcc and related tools. I can't answer for their other
products like the various libraries they make. Codesourcery do not
write gcc alone - they are working with a massive existing code base
that has been developed over a long time by many companies and
individuals. It is certainly fair to describe a lot of gcc as "obscure"
code, although many parts of it is reasonably well documented. However,
you can't blame the intertwined structure of gcc on CodeSourcery - much
of it stems back to RMS's original design decisions, which included a
highly monolithic design to make it difficult for commercial compiler
developers to steal parts of the code.