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A comment on Google offers free fabbing for 130nm open-source chips. Parent comment

Re:Google offers free fabbing for 130nm open-source chips by hamandcheese on Tuesday July 07, 2020 @10:20AM (#23759550)
Very similar to what you just said, I suspect that a driving factor in the state of open source in hardware is that anyone working in hardware almost be definition has a large corporate backing, since producing hardware is so capital intensive (compared to software).

If that is basically a given, why publish anything for free, when you can instead charge 10k/seat in licensing?

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Re:Google offers free fabbing for 130nm open-source chips by devit on Tuesday July 07, 2020 @11:10AM (#23760037)
Possibly because initially the open source software will be significantly worse than the proprietary software and thus won't get any sales, and it will only be better with a lot of contributions, but then it's already freely available and so it still won't get any sales (but might get support/SaaS contracts).
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