From owner-opl-discuss@openpatents.org Fri Jan 14 15:21:06 2000 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by primefactor.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) id PAA00967 for opl-discuss-list; Fri, 14 Jan 2000 15:21:06 -0500 Received: from ridge.aps.org (ridge.aps.org [149.28.1.5]) by primefactor.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id PAA00964 for ; Fri, 14 Jan 2000 15:21:03 -0500 Received: from aps.org (mccoy.aps.org [149.28.3.132]) by ridge.aps.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id UAA28004 for ; Fri, 14 Jan 2000 20:13:35 GMT Message-ID: <387F852C.F8B891E5@aps.org> Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2000 15:21:00 -0500 From: Arthur Smith X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.2.5-15 i686) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: opl-discuss@openpatents.org Subject: Open patents and intellectual property Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-opl-discuss@openpatents.org Precedence: bulk I sent the following to Bruce Sterling after reading some of his Viridian ideas (http://www.bespoke.org/viridian/). I haven't really heard back from him yet, but it seemed relevant to this list too, now that I've discovered it. The OPL (if it works as I think it should) may be another major step in moving us to a new concept of information sharing, as opposed to the information hoarding that surrounds the very term "intellectual property". It's essentially the same issues and the same problems whether you're talking about open source, self-published MP3's, Sterling's open design ideas, or anything that flies against the way patent and copyright concepts have been misused in the last decades of the 20th century. Anyway, I hope this fits in here - openpatents.org sure seems like an idea whose time has come, Arthur Smith (apsmith@aps.org) -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Free and Open creativity Date: Sat, 8 Jan 2000 01:34:05 -0500 (EST) From: "Arthur P. Smith" To: bruces@well.com I'm intrigued by your manifesto, in particular calling for designers and artists to stop thinking of their creations as property and start sharing them. I know this concept owes much to the open source software successes, but something very like this I think really derives from the way science is, or should be, done - the concept of sharing new ideas and discoveries to let everybody benefit, and to let others quickly build on (or falsify) your work is one of the reasons science has progressed so amazingly far in this century, leading to many of our new technologies in the process. Since I work for a major scientific publisher we've been grappling with this concept of treating what we publish as intellectual property which we, the authors, and the whole community also feel should somehow be freely available and not locked up in the ways that "property" seems to want to be. A number of proposals have been made - the most forceful perhaps by Stevan Harnad (http://cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/) who thinks authors of scientific articles should either pay to have their work refereed and distributed by publishers (not to be confused with a vanity press which it so closely resembles...) or such things should be funded by grants, in any case making the literature freely available to readers. We've so far settled on a medium where we allow, even encourage, physicists to self-publish their work as they format it themselves (particularly on the Los Alamos E-Print Archive at http://www.arxiv.org/), and then we run through the editorial process here to refine things and spiff up the papers a bit and republish something that subscribers pay to get access to. At least that's the model we'll be in for a few more years - we do have one experimental journal running in the Harnad model. In any case, scientists have almost never been directly paid for their work of creation or discovery, instead receiving payment in recognition at least within their academic department. Except of course for patents. And thinking about patents seems to bring a possible broader scope to the concepts suggested by your manifesto. Now that we have these wonderful new media for communication, wouldn't it make sense to replace the patent system with something that still rewards the creator for a creation, still rewards the inventor for an invention, but doesn't leave that intellectual entity as a piece of property which cannot be used by others without surmounting a barrier of fees and licenses? At least patents, unlike copyrights, are of relatively brief duration, after which the concepts become public knowledge; but if we recognize the creator from the start, wouldn't we be likely to see publication of great new designs and processes in, say, a few months after their creation, rather than the 20 years it takes a patent to expire (not to mention the 3-10 initial years of secrecy before the application is approved). Reducing the cycle time for great ideas to build on one another, making these great ideas publicly available to the 2 or so billion inhabitants of this planet who could possibly do something with them - wouldn't that lead to an explosion of creativity and technology development in resolution of innumerable problems we have here? The global warming issue you have focused on is one demonstration - clearly we have a huge range of technologies that could help in one way or another, but we need them to be working now, not 10 or 20 or 30 years from now. Space development is another - there are a lot of suggestions of technologies to get us into space for a tiny fraction of the cost NASA expends now - an open approach to the technology development and design could get us affordable space transportation for the masses in a much shorter time. There are clearly a lot of unknowns in this. Where does the money come from to support these inventors and designers who are donating their creations? One way is to create a foundation that awards money based on the usefulness of contributions, supported in turn by the consumer level (manufacturing or service) industries that make use of these ideas. A lot more detail than this is needed - but I think it could possibly lead to a whole new economic paradigm: in addition to the manufacturing and service sectors, we have a "creative" sector that is at least partly funded through a (surely voluntary) tax on the first two. Perhaps we are heading that way anyway? Sort of a meta-economy on top of the real one? Eventually as artifical intelligence kicks in, perhaps the meta-economy will be the only one where humans actually do any work? But that's a way down the line. I think it's a wonderfully exciting time we live in, but I would be deeply disappointed if the great new communication tools we've been given become a mass of barriers and toll-booths, wasting creativity through needless duplication and lack of communication. I think between artists and designers, scientists and engineers we may have the makings of a truly new order in the world - there seem to be many separate threads along these lines - perhaps they will converge? Anyway, thanks for listening... Arthur ------------------------------------------------------------ Arthur P. Smith Research & Development The American Physical Society 1 Research Rd. Box 9000 e-mail: apsmith@aps.org Ridge, NY 11961-9000 phone: 516-591-4072 From owner-opl-discuss@openpatents.org Wed Jan 19 23:24:41 2000 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by primefactor.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) id XAA07366 for opl-discuss-list; Wed, 19 Jan 2000 23:24:41 -0500 Received: (from mark@localhost) by primefactor.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) id XAA07360; Wed, 19 Jan 2000 23:24:39 -0500 Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2000 23:24:39 -0500 From: Mark Shewmaker To: opl-discuss@openpatents.org Subject: Re: Open patents and intellectual property Message-ID: <20000119232439.A7241@primefactor.com> References: <387F852C.F8B891E5@aps.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0i In-Reply-To: <387F852C.F8B891E5@aps.org>; from apsmith@aps.org on Fri, Jan 14, 2000 at 03:21:00PM -0500 Sender: owner-opl-discuss@openpatents.org Precedence: bulk On Fri, Jan 14, 2000 at 03:21:00PM -0500, Arthur Smith wrote: > I sent the following to Bruce Sterling after reading some of his > Viridian ideas (http://www.bespoke.org/viridian/). I haven't really > heard back from him yet, but it seemed relevant to this list too, now > that I've discovered it. It seems most relevant. Thanks for forwarding it here. > The OPL (if it works as I think it should) may > be another major step in moving us to a new concept of information > sharing, as opposed to the information hoarding that surrounds the very > term "intellectual property". I would like the OPL to be able to do just that, only focused on the issue as it relates to patent and patent-like intellectual properties. (There are already other groups that are doing a fantastic job of addressing the issue from copyright, writing-code, writing-documentation and writing-systems viewpoints. I just want to address the issue from the point of view of patents and things that effectively act like patents.) However, one of my more long-term goals is in fact to implement alternate methods of promoting discovery and invention, (and in which the discoveries and inventions are licensed under the OPL instead of merely being known of but inaccessible). Removing restrictions on sharing IP will help things a lot in and of itself, but the real gains will come in implementing a system designed to function best in such an environment, (such that people are rewarded for creating accessible solutions as opposed to creating combination solutions/roadblocks.) However, the former has to be done before the latter can be implemented, so the more short to medium term problem is to debug and promote the OPL in order to provide way out of the trap that I think people generally get stuck as relates to patents. I think people and organizations tend to get stuck in a type of game-theory trap when thinking of how to manage their patents and patent-like IP. Most players see value in restricting the rights to use these IPs, but I think their judgments are based on distorted information: The costs and benefits of the two types of strategies, (restriction versus dissemination), are not as clear as they could be; important information is missing or distorted, and that biases the players' judgment toward restricting use. There is no way to see the true costs of patent restrictions when everyone is forced to participate under these same system of rule that, by design, rewards restriction. If players could opt out of that system, they would be able to objectively determine whether participation is beneficial to them. Without a perfect and globally available method of opting out, the true overall costs of restricting discovered information and invented techniques and solutions remain hidden, and the benefits of wide dissemination of the same remain unclear. To be fair, an opt-out system should also show the costs of opting out. If there are inventions and discoveries that would not have occurred were the relevant intellectual property not in force, then those things should not be accessible to participants when opting out. It's not possible to create this perfect, globally-accessible method of opting out of the system without legislative changes. However, it should be possible to put together a limited opt-out system through voluntary agreements that can effectively get us most of the way to a global opt-out system; I want the OPL to do just that. Speaking in broad terms, under the OPL you agree to abandon your patent and patent-like monopoly powers over all who also do so to the same or greater extent. You can enter the system gradually, through any of 7 Options; you needn't "abandon" all your applicable intellectual property at once. The OPL is designed to make it safe to share your IP; no one should be able to take advantage of your generosity. If someone uses the OPL to make or distribute a product incorporating your IP, then assuming you've agreed to a high-enough Option of the OPL, you'll have just as much of a right to make a similar product as this other person does, even if the product incorporates 200 OPL'd patents from 30 different companies. You may need to rewrite code if the product incorporates proprietary software, but you're not prevented from writing a competing version. The fact that some IP restrictions have been lifted is of course not guarantee of success. The basic rules of economics still apply: You still need solid funding, good employees, efficient manufacturing, good management, etc. The only difference is that some restrictions on creativity will have been lifted. Those IP restrictions are only removed under "opt-out" conditions. The OPL will generally not apply if you incorporate non-OPL'ed patents into it. You have just opted back into the system in a very localized way, just for this product, and you will have to negotiate patent licensing agreements with the owners of all patents that are incorporated in this product. (Note: The OPL only addresses the licensing of patents and IP that restricts similarly to patents by attempting to prevent re-implementations. Restrictions on the look and feel of a user interface, (whether based on patent, copyright, or trade dress restrictions), restrictions on reading and learning from material made available to you, (better known as reverse-engineering restrictions), are examples of what I'm terming patent-like restrictions. The decision to disseminate or restrict the flow of information is of course a larger issue than just patents, but there is no need to address the broader issue here. The OPL can address the issue from a patent and patent-like IP standpoint; other folks are already doing a marvelous job at addressing other parts of the issue.) That was a bit of a rant there, but the main idea is that yes, I do want to make sure people can use the OPL to go from a system that rewards restriction information the rights to use it to a system that rewards dissemination of information and the right to use it. > It's essentially the same issues and the > same problems whether you're talking about open source, self-published > MP3's, Sterling's open design ideas, or anything that flies against the > way patent and copyright concepts have been misused in the last decades > of the 20th century. I agree. One thing I want to make sure of is that the scope of the OPL is well matched to the goal of providing a way out of the trap patent-like IP restrictions cause. (Making sure the problem in general is addressed, as opposed to just the most well-known specific implementation of the problem.) But as to the scope of the OPL: 1. It should address IP that acts similarly to patents. 2. It shouldn't address things that are best address elsewhere. (Such as non-patent-like IP issues.) 3. It should be compatible with other similar but non-patent-related efforts, (such as Open Source code), so it needs to address them to at least that extent. 4. It should be able to address patent issues as they relate to different industries, or be able to be extended to do so. > Anyway, I hope this fits in here I think it does. Although I responded to a number of your points already in my rant above, I do want to respond to a couple things in your forwarded mail in context: > -------- Original Message -------- > Subject: Free and Open creativity > Date: Sat, 8 Jan 2000 01:34:05 -0500 (EST) > From: "Arthur P. Smith" > To: bruces@well.com > > I'm intrigued by your manifesto, in particular calling for designers > and artists to stop thinking of their creations as property and start > sharing them. I know this concept owes much to the open source software > successes, but something very like this I think really derives from the > way science is, or should be, done - the concept of sharing new ideas > and discoveries to let everybody benefit, and to let others quickly > build > on (or falsify) your work is one of the reasons science has progressed > so amazingly far in this century, leading to many of our new > technologies > in the process. The basic idea of sharing inherent in the scientific method is at odds with the notion of restricting the use of ideas inherent in patents. Rather than having a (patent) system that attempts to promote progress based on a granted ability to restrict ideas, we should have a system that promotes progress by settign things up so that people tend to benefit from sharing their ideas, inventions, and discoveries. (I feel that I'm hardly doing more than rewording what you say later on.) > Since I work for a major scientific publisher we've been grappling with > this concept of treating what we publish as intellectual property which > we, the authors, and the whole community also feel should somehow be > freely > available and not locked up in the ways that "property" seems to want to > be. Information almost might as well not have been discovered if it's merely locked up. > And thinking about patents seems to bring a possible broader scope to > the > concepts suggested by your manifesto. Now that we have these wonderful > new media for communication, wouldn't it make sense to replace the > patent > system with something that still rewards the creator for a creation, > still > rewards the inventor for an invention, but doesn't leave that > intellectual > entity as a piece of property which cannot be used by others without > surmounting a barrier of fees and licenses? [...] > There are clearly a lot of unknowns in this. Where does the money come > from > to support these inventors and designers who are donating their > creations? > One way is to create a foundation that awards money based on the > usefulness of > contributions, supported in turn by the consumer level (manufacturing or > service) industries that make use of these ideas. A lot more detail than > this > is needed - but I think it could possibly lead to a whole new economic > paradigm: in addition to the manufacturing and service sectors, we have > a "creative" sector that is at least partly funded through a (surely > voluntary) > tax on the first two. Or financial derivatives: 2. What if you could agree to pay anyone who provided a solution to a certain problem? 1. What if you could also wager on whether anyone would in fact be able to provide such a solution under a certain price by a certain time, (essentially doing stock-market type transactions on scientific and engineering questions?) 3. What if you could place market and limit orders on (2), or trade futures in same? 4. Given that the above helps quantify the risk of an individual investment, and that over a group of possible investments the aggregate risk could be known to a greater degree, that leads to the possibility of insuring against, (or for), technological improvements. The above would imply that you could potentially insure that technological improvements would lower your costs of having some process done by, say 20% within 1 year. You could go to an insurance company and agree to pay them 5 of those 20 percentage points for them to insure you against the possibility of the technological improvement *not* happening. If it does happen, you're out that 5%. If it doesn't, they pay that 20% for however long you agreed. (The details don't matter; I'm being sloppy with the wording of percentages anyway.) The interesting thing is that if in this market so-called insider trading is allowed, then the insurer would have major incentives to purchase stock in solving the problem. If they can effectively pay to have the problem solved, (even if it's indirect or distributed, and even if all they end up paying for is for someone else to point out to them that the problem was solved ten years before), then they'll make money on the deal, the information will be public, and the manufacturer will have had more predictable expenses, as well as a greater likelihood of having access to any other improvements went hand-in-hand with the one that came about. I think that's a much better way of promoting invention and discovery than granting people monopoly rights. (And I think it would be amazingly cool to have insurance companies and stock brokers to be funding research and development.) Here are two folks who talk about these sorts of ideas: Robin Hanson's Idea Futures, discussed at http://hanson.gmu.edu/ideafutures.html Marc Stiegler's Castpoints discussed in his book _Earthweb_, see http://www.skyhunter.com/earthweb/ -Mark Shewmaker mark@primefactor.com From owner-opl-discuss@openpatents.org Wed Jan 26 11:34:16 2000 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by primefactor.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) id LAA18352 for opl-discuss-list; Wed, 26 Jan 2000 11:34:16 -0500 Received: (from mark@localhost) by primefactor.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) id LAA18346; Wed, 26 Jan 2000 11:34:15 -0500 Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2000 11:34:15 -0500 From: Mark Shewmaker To: opl-discuss@openpatents.org Subject: Renumbered Options and Pools Message-ID: <20000126113415.A18252@primefactor.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0i Sender: owner-opl-discuss@openpatents.org Precedence: bulk I've renumbered the Options and Pools of the OPL to (I think) become a bit less confusing: I moved the Open Source Option and Pool from 1 to 6, shifted the existing 2-6 down to 1-5, and then renamed the new 6 to "F". I also broke out the one table describing the relationships between the Options and Pools into three separate tables. Does anyone has any comments on this slight reorg and renaming? I think this is a simpler and easier-to-understand way of putting things together, but I'd be oblivious to any remaining and solvable confusing wordings. The direct line is http://www.openpatents.org/license/versions/opl.php . The old-format table (with the new numbering scheme) is still in the middle of the current version of the license, and it's followed by the three newer tables. Any suggestions? -Mark Shewmaker mark@primefactor.com From owner-opl-discuss@openpatents.org Sun Jan 30 04:38:04 2000 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by primefactor.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) id EAA05064 for opl-discuss-list; Sun, 30 Jan 2000 04:38:04 -0500 Received: (from mark@localhost) by primefactor.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) id EAA05060 for opl-discuss@openpatents.org; Sun, 30 Jan 2000 04:38:02 -0500 Received: from www0j.netaddress.usa.net (www0j.netaddress.usa.net [204.68.24.39]) by primefactor.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id EAA04850 for ; Sun, 30 Jan 2000 04:19:26 -0500 Received: (qmail 19674 invoked by uid 60001); 30 Jan 2000 09:19:20 -0000 Message-ID: <20000130091920.19673.qmail@www0j.netaddress.usa.net> Received: from 204.68.24.39 by www0j for [199.203.98.250] via web-mailer(M3.3.1.96) on Sun Jan 30 09:19:20 GMT 2000 Date: 30 Jan 00 09:19:20 Asia/Tel_Aviv From: jamil khatib To: opl-discuss@openpatents.org Subject: OpenPatent & OpenIPCore CC: mark@primefactor.com X-Mailer: USANET web-mailer (M3.3.1.96) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by primefactor.com id EAA04850 Sender: owner-opl-discuss@openpatents.org Precedence: bulk Hi, I am very intrested in the idea of OpenPatent License for OpenIPCore project. In the openipcore project we are trying to define a protection scheme for openhardware designs. we have several suggestions about this kind of protection "visit te license page at our site http://www.openip.org/oc". I'd like to know how can we use the openPatent as one of hte protction schemes to hardware. Thanks pls: replay to khatib@ieee.org Thanks Jamil Khatib OpenIP Organization http:/www.openip.org OpenIPCore Project http://www.openip.org/oc OpenCores Project http://www.opencores.org ____________________________________________________________________ Get your own FREE, personal Netscape WebMail account today at http://webmail.netscape.com. From owner-opl-discuss@openpatents.org Mon Jan 31 03:22:49 2000 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by primefactor.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) id DAA18042 for opl-discuss-list; Mon, 31 Jan 2000 03:22:49 -0500 Received: (from mark@localhost) by primefactor.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) id DAA18032; Mon, 31 Jan 2000 03:22:44 -0500 Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2000 03:22:42 -0500 From: Mark Shewmaker To: khatib@ieee.org Cc: opl-discuss@openpatents.org Subject: Re: OpenPatent & OpenIPCore Message-ID: <20000131032242.A17363@primefactor.com> References: <20000130091920.19673.qmail@www0j.netaddress.usa.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0i In-Reply-To: <20000130091920.19673.qmail@www0j.netaddress.usa.net>; from jamilkhatib@netscape.net on Fri, Mar 07, 2036 at 03:47:36PM +0000 Sender: owner-opl-discuss@openpatents.org Precedence: bulk On Fri, Mar 07, 2036 at 03:47:36PM +0000, jamil khatib wrote: > Hi, > > I am very intrested in the idea of OpenPatent License for OpenIPCore > project. > In the openipcore project we are trying to define a protection scheme > for openhardware designs. we have several suggestions about this kind of > protection "visit te license page at our site http://www.openip.org/oc". > I'd like to know how can we use the openPatent as one of hte protction > schemes to hardware. Well, it's still in development, so the most important thing is to make sure the license can be adapted to meet your needs while it's still in alpha, assuming that our goals end up to be as compatible as they seem. Above all, I think it's very important to prevent gratuitous proliferation of GPL'ish patent-cross-licensing agreements. It would wasteful and possibly harmful to all of us. We're already inconvenienced by the proliferation of Open Source licenses. There can be and are good reason to have different Open Source licenses, some are business reasons and some are ethical reasons. However, we're still left with a maze of incompatibilities. I don't want a similar maze of incompatibilities to show up in patent-land. It would be much worse with patents, because while for copyrights authors could theoretically all use different licenses and work out the maze of incompatibilities between them all, for patents all the software authors would also have to persuade the same patent-holders to license their patent(s), over and over, for every single license, probably with less and less success as time went on, which is the main reason why I think having multiple similar patent licenses could be much more destructive than having a proliferation of Open Source licenses. (Although the Open Source copyright licenses do tend to have small references to patent rights that have worked pretty well so far, they haven't required any of this explicit licensing of individual patent numbers, so the problem above hasn't shown up. I would expect it to be a problem if multiple similar patent licenses proliferate, though.) So I would really hope we could consolidate the patent issues into one license that could be referenced as needed. Referring to this one patent license would also make it possible for you to simplify your license by uncoupling it from the patent issues, and nobody has to duplicate work, whether it's writing and promoting the license, or persuading patent holders to agree to the twelfth license of the same type in a row. With that notion, (and some other strategic notions) in mind, I tried to make the OPL so it could be a one-size-fits-all license. People can submit patents under the license such that they can be used in different circumstances. I tried to set up the Options and Pools to maximize the number of conceivable and compatible groups that could benefit. One compatibility problem I see from the Open Hardware and OpenIPCore points of view is that the OPL is currently a GPL-ish license, not an LGPL-ish one. I have to admit that I had a hard time really wrapping my mind around the concepts currently in the license. I thought I had everything clear in my head, but when it got to writing things down, I had to change the Options and Pools around a good bit before everything fit. I've held off adding LGPL'ish parts to the license so that the GPL-ish parts can be nailed down. Then, if it makes sense and is still necessary, the LGPL-ish parts can be added in. I'm coming more and more to think that a GPL-ish-only license will do, because over time more of the things I thought would require LGPL-ish additions seem more and more to be doable with (a better edited and legally debugged version of) the current license. So, even though both you and the openppc group will probably need to have lgpl-ish options of the license, I wonder if we could nail down the gpl-ish parts first, and then see what's left that needs to be specified. One snag: The license is geared toward making a distinction between hardware and software. I haven't fully wrapped my mind around what that distinction should mean in reference to, say, a vhdl design containing only OPL-licensed IP together with things the OPL doesn't cover, but housed in something that is covered by a non-OPL patent. What I think should happen, (and again I haven't thought all this through really), is that if the vhdl design is considered Open Source, that it should be considered software just as much as a handheld device's EPROM code stored in a patented device would be considered software, and thus the rules of Pool F (the Free Software/Open Source Pool) of the OPL would apply. The problem then is on what happens if a proprietary vhdl library is included? That would seem to mean the work-as-a-whole isn't Open Source anymore, so this would have to be considered a proprietary software work. But should closed source vhdl designs still be considered software? In a way it almost seems like a trade secret. Copyright is supposed to allow you to look at the thing in question even though there are limits on redistribution. Is there an equivalent of a disassembler for closed-source vhdl, where given a chip you can fair-use critique what's there just as much as you could do with a movie or with disassembled proprietary code? Even so, I'm still strongly leaning towards the look-at-it-like-software side both for Open Source and non Open Source cases, such that I would want to eventually bring it up with patent attorney(s) that would go over the license. If you have any comments or pointers to information on why it should be looked at that way from the point of view of the OPL, please post them. (Maybe the PLIP requirement should say that you have to have access to the "compiled" (?) vhdl results.) Anyway, are there things the OpenIP groups would need that are not currently addressed, or that could be better addressed? I'm interested in any general or specific deficiencies you might see in the license. I'd be delighted if you could find the OPL useful. Please let me know what I can do to help. -Mark Shewmaker mark@primefactor.com