Several things in this update: the OpenPower Foundation released their
EULA (which is really exciting); RISC-V Foundation opens access to
*some* mailing lists (but doesn't tackle the important stuff); we had
a last-minute decision to go to FOSDEM to meet NLNet (and meet lots
of nice people including someone from the EU Commission); we have new team
members helping out (and making really good progress).

Before we begin, however, we still have a high-priority task of
finding a C++/compiler developer for the NLNet-funded 3D MESA Driver
project.  EUR 50,000 is available, tax-free: [this
thread](http://lists.libre-riscv.org/pipermail/libre-riscv-dev/2020-January/003302.html)
describes the scope, where you're pretty much at liberty to choose the
approach that you'd like to take.

### OpenPOWER Foundation Releases the Power ISA EULA

This is a big deal: the
[EULA](https://openpowerfoundation.org/final-draft-of-the-power-isa-eula-released/)
for anyone wishing to create a Power ISA compatible processor, it's been
designed to be "libre-friendly."  We will need to do a full review,
and would appreciate feedback on it, via 
[this bug report](http://bugs.libre-riscv.org/show_bug.cgi?id=179).
A very quick read (like, right now): the really interesting bit is the
combination of a royalty-free grant (as long as you are fully
compliant with Power ISA) in combination with "if you initiate
patent litigation, you lose all rights immediately."  This provides an
extremely strong disincentive for patent trolls to "try it on."  It also
actively encourages contributors to make sure that their work becomes an
"official" part of Power, because that then gets them under the
"umbrella" of protection as part of this EULA.

My only concern - long-term - is the warning about Custom Extensions
potentially being incompatible.  We remember the Altivec clash very
well, citing it as a historic lesson of "How Not to Manage an ISA,"
because both Altivec's vector extension and the one it clashed
with became high-profile, public, commonly used extensions,
and it damaged Power ISA's entire reputation and viability as a result.

With our extensions being designed *knowingly* in advance to be
high-profile, public, and commonly used, we absolutely have
to submit them as "official" extensions, or to work with the Open Power
Foundation to create an official "escape-sequence" namespace system
(ISAMUX/ISANS).  As mentioned previously: anyone familiar with C++,
we need a hardware version of "using namespace," in its entirety.

First preliminary reading however, as Hugh kindly said privately to me,
there's really nothing controversial, here, and it actually looks really
good and extremely well-designed.

# RISC-V Mailing Lists

In contrast to how OpenPower is being managed, since the last update,
some of the RISC-V mailing lists have become open, though there was no
announcement of this move and you can't get access to the prior
archives.  Still, I applaud the fact that they're finally making an
effort.

Unfortunately, critically important lists, such as the UNIX Platform
Working Group, remain closed and secretive. This is actually quite
damaging to RISC-V's reputation - it is incongruous with Libre ideals
to tell u-boot and Linux kernel developers to sign a secret agreement
and then join a closed mailing list, just for the privelege of
contributing.

*Editor's notes: Where is it documented that a secret agreement is
required? Most people won't know what you're referring to. Is the
agreement really not public at all? As for private mailing lists,
please elaborate - do you mean none of the posts to the mailing list
are public, or do you mean non-member posting is not allowed, or
both?*

They still have not responded (as is legally required under their
trademark obligations) to any of the twenty to thirty very
deliberately public, prominent, and reasonable in-good-faith requests
for inclusion in the *innovation* (not just *use*) of RISC-V by Libre
Businesses with "full transparency" as part of their core business
objectives.

*Editor's notes: Who is "they?" Please provide a link explaining
trademark obligations and what is the trademark in question? Do you
have links to some of the public requests being made? In what forum
were the requests made and how do we know "they" received the
requests? Is there a legal distinction between "innovation" and "use?"
Overall, I think we need a lot more detail to make a compelling
argument here.*

I really don't want to be the only person informing people about how
RISC-V is still "Fake Open Source" and how it's effectively cartelled
(and is running afoul of anti-trust laws).  If someone else can take over
responsibility for this, I'd much prefer to keep the LibreSOC a positive,
welcoming, and progressive community.

*Editor's notes: I don't think it's worth having this paragraph unless
there's a whole lot more backstory to support it. For example, what do
you mean by cartel? Who is running the cartel and why? How is it
running afoul of anti-trust laws and was that ever proven in a
reputable legal jurisdiction? I'm not saying this story shouldn't be
told, but only hinting at it does a disservice to everyone and will
ultimately only serve to isolate you as a conspiracy theorist. PS: I
see you do a better job at explaining all this a few paragraphs
later. I think topic deserves its own update that you can point people
to so they can easily grok the situation without having to wade
through a bunch of other stuff. I also think it's worth engaging with
some of the RISC-V folks directly before the update is posted to give
them a chance to respond or offer corrections. This is an incredibly
important topic and we need to make it airtight.*

### FOSDEM 2020

As mentioned
[on the list](http://lists.libre-riscv.org/pipermail/libre-riscv-dev/2020-January/003660.html)
we received a message from Michiel that they were financially backing over
*25* projects that were attending and giving talks at FOSDEM!
They also let everyone know that the nice people from Brussels were going
to be attending.  At which point, I went, "ah" and scrambled like mad to
make sure I was there, presenting a smiling face to ensure that the nice
EU Commission people knew that their money was definitely being put to good
use.

This actually turns out to be a serious problem for the EU.  My friend Phil
decided a few years ago to go along to one of these "Independent Grant Review"
processes.  He basically said that not only was the quality of the applications
absolutely atrocious, but worse than that the people volunteering to do the
review - ordinary people like solicitors, office managers, farmers - had
precisely zero technical knowledge and couldn't tell the difference between
a good application, a bad application, or a deceptive application.

These problems only increase as NLNet grants get larger and more
numerous. Consequently, it's quite a challenge for NLNet to ensure the
money they've been given responsibility for reaches people who release
actual free software to improve real-world infrastructure for the
benefit of EU Citizens (and incidentally the rest of the world).

I had a brief chat with the person from the EU Commission.  He was
delighted to be able to see the sheer number of people involved and being
sponsored by NLNet.  I had an opportunity to ask him about the anti-trust
aspects of the RISC-V Foundation's ongoing intransigent behaviour.
He initially expressed puzzlement and some concern, because the EU is
funding quite a lot of RISC-V projects, and none of them had any issues.
I asked him a very simple question: "how many of those projects are
simply *implementing* existing RISC-V Standards?," and he replied, "all
of them."  I then asked, "how many of those projects are *innovating*,
developing alternative extensions to what is dictated by the RISC-V
Foundation?" With the answer being "none," *that* was the point at which
he understood the extent of the problem, and (with the systematic failure
to respond to in-good-faith requests to participate in innovation),
how the RISC-V Foundation - and its members, by way of them having
"voting power" and thus having direct influence over how the RISC-V Foundation
is run - are at risk of violating EU anti-trust legislation.

### Meeting Other LibreSOC People

It was fantastic to meet Staf, and talk to him about the upcoming
test chip he'll be doing.  He will be including an SR-Latch cell for
us, because it saves such a vast number of gates in the dependency
matrices if we use a D-flip-flop: 50,000 gates if we use an SR-Latch,
and a *quarter of a million* if we use a DFF.

I met several other people, including one who can help us develop a
[board support package (BSP)](http://bugs.libre-riscv.org/show_bug.cgi?id=164).
Also, we got a chance to talk to several people with cross-over skillsets.

This alone was worth the time to go to FOSDEM this year.  Now we have
to make sure to plan properly in advance, to put in some papers at
appropriate conferences.  We really need to organise a proper
conference where everyone meets up.

### New Members

We created an [about us](http://libre-riscv.org/about_us) page for
members -- if you'd like to help, check out the [How can I
help?](http://libre-riscv.org/) section of the website.

We now hoave four new people who are contributing: Cole, Veera, Yehowshua,
and Michael.  Veera is a sysadmin and I would be delighted to get some
help managing the server.  In particular I would like to install `public-inbox`
but it requires `exim4` and `mailman` to be converted to `Maildir`.  This is
the kind of thing that would be great to hand over to another sysadmin.

Cole just loves the idea of what we're doing and wants to learn, so
what I've asked him to do is simply to follow instructions and
tutorials, and give us feedback on whether they're clear.  If not,
that's a problem that needs to be fixed -- it's precisely his *lack*
of experience that is absolutely perfect for testing that.

Yehowshua -- a friend of Michael -- got in touch around the time of the
last update, and he's been helping find funding.  As he is at Georgia Tech,
he will be applying for the LAUNCH-X Programme, funded initially by my
old boss, Chris Klaus.  Chris has been really helpful here, and he's really
delighted to be able to help other Georgia Tech Alumni.  Yehowshua has
also been encouraging and helping with a redesign of the website CSS,
and has been instrumental in a major rewrite of the wording.

Michael has just jumped straight in to the processor design.  Yehowshua
tells me he first met Michael as he was sitting in a cafe with an FPGA
board attached to his laptop.  He's another of these extremely rare
self-motivated, self-taught, "auto-learner" types who are worth their
weight in gold.  He's currently helping with the
[Dynamic SIMD partitioner](http://bugs.libre-riscv.org/show_bug.cgi?id=132)
which we will need to do a special update about, at some point.

One particularly fascinating common theme between all of us turns out
to be music, maths, and high-coordination sports.  Yehowshua loves
skate-boarding, and I love rollerblading, for example.

One very interesting thing came out of the contact with Georgia Tech's
CREATE-X Programme: we are looking to create a Public Benefit Corporation.
More on this later, however it became clear to us that we need good
"communicators" at least as much as need more "programmers," although we do still
urgently need a C++ compiler type person for the
[MESA 3D Driver](https://libre-riscv.org/nlnet_2019_amdvlk_port/).
We need entrepreneurs -- especially undergraduates from Georgia Tech -- willing
to take on the responsibility for going out and finding, meeting, and talking to
clients and customers, coming up with ideas, and giving us, as "engineers,"
the feedback we need to target the processor at an actual market.

### Other Stuff

The extra NLNet budgets are helping, as is the continued sponsorship
from Purism.  I am beginning to get slightly overloaded with the
managerial and bureaucratic tasks, combined with the "Engineering"
tasks that, as is always the case, require 100% sustained week-long
focus. Making all these things compatible is a challenge.

I still have to coordinate the NLNet tasks for each of the Memoranda
of Understanding, at which point people can then get paid for
completing the associated tasks.  I can't quite get over the fact that
NLNet was happy to allocate such a huge amount of money to this
project, it's amazing, humbling, and a huge responsibility.

Also, we got word that the 180 nm tape-outs (one in March 2020, one in
October 2020) are actually subsidised.  In addition, we have *verbal*
informal confirmation that some proprietary cell libraries are about
to be announced as being libre-licensed.  This is particularly
fascinating.

Right now, when it comes to creating Libre ASICs, people basically
give up and don't even bother because it's so ridiculously costly --
no individual Libre ASIC developer could possibly imagine themselves
contributing to, let alone raising the multi-million funds for, say, a
4 GHz 10-stage 12-core SMP multi-issue processor, so they don't even
bother to design or release anything that *could* be part of such a
design. Yet, reading between the lines, we can hypothesise that
various "noises" about how hardware is proprietary, and how difficult
it is to do Libre ASICs, are starting to yield some results, as
various large companies who shall remain nameless for now are quietly
and subtly waving around very large amounts of cash in front of the
noses of Foundries, tempting them to release things like cell
libraries under Libre licenses. Given that the U.S. trade war has
recently caused a whopping **12%** drop in [ASIC
sales](https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/20/02/07/2157253/chip-industry-had-worst-sales-year-since-dot-com-bubble-burst),
with U.S. ASIC sales dropping **24%**, foundries might be quite open
to large up-front cash deals.

Anyway, as always, if you'd like to help out (and actually receive
money for doing so), we have a nice shiny new section [on the
website](https://libre-riscv.org/), "How can I help?" and there is a
heck of a lot to do.  Feel free to get in touch, any time.