From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: "David Mosberger-Tang" Date: Thu, 25 May 2006 15:27:12 +0000 Subject: Re: dropping CONFIG_IA32_SUPPORT from ia64 Message-Id: List-Id: References: <200605241438.34303.bjorn.helgaas@hp.com> In-Reply-To: <200605241438.34303.bjorn.helgaas@hp.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: linux-ia64@vger.kernel.org On 5/25/06, Luck, Tony wrote: > > I also agree with Bjorn that the propriatary tool shouldn't be the only > > way. To the Intel people on the lists that work on this, what is Intel's > > position on open sourcing this technology? > > Open-sourcing this code has been discussed many times inside Intel, but > (AFAIK) the answer is still "no". I try to stay away from legal questions as far as possible but one nugget that may be worth pointing out is that Intel's ia32 engine is very much a stand-alone "module", just like the ia32 hardware-engine in the pre-Montecito IPF CPUs. AFAIK, the exact same binary is even used both for the Windows and Linux versions of IA32EL. Thus, Debian ought to be able to treat the issue similar to the msttcorefonts. That is, if you installed the (not-yet-existing) ia32el Debian package, you'd install all the open-source pieces directly from Debian, and then go out and fetch the proprietary ia32 engine from Intel's web-site. IIRC, some tweaks may be needed to Intel's website/license to really enable that but I think the key to making this work would be to view Intel's ia32 engine as a CPU which happens to be implemented in software. --david -- Mosberger Consulting LLC, http://www.mosberger-consulting.com/