Sun's Archaeological Dig Gives Some Results

Contributed by ray on 2007-08-28 from the it's-about-time dept.

In June this year, Sun's Simon Phipps spoke of the company's efforts to find documentation to older Sun hardware and allow its usage by outsiders. It seems some progress has been made. In this blog entry, Simon describes recent progress in locating and releasing the documents OpenBSD has been asking for. He also mentions his collaboration with David Gwynne in identifying which hardware documents developers need.

The results so far can be seen at the FOSS Open Hardware Documentation page.

Note that there are still many documents missing due to investigation or legal review. Let us hope that they will released soon.

(Comments are closed)

Comments

By Dusty (198.54.202.246) riverdusty@yahoo.com on 2007-08-28 11:47 www.loveandnature.co.za

Ah yes. Take note Mr Shuttleworth and others. Shady Linux only deals with hardware manufacturers is not how it is done.
This is how it is done.
Congratulations.
By Anonymous Coward (24.37.242.64) on 2007-08-28 12:07

If I'm understanding this correctly and all goes through, then this is logical sense is great! For both Sun and the FOSS community, as a whole.
By Anonymous Coward (85.178.114.166) on 2007-08-28 13:09

I don't own a SUN or anything SPARC-related but if this leads to better HW support and propably new drivers it's just great!

It's great for us but just a little step ahead. But at least one step ahead and none back. ;-]

Thanks to all who always explained the need of FREE documentation!

And hopefully the SPARC-Users get some nice benefits like Drivers or further supported Models or CPU-Types. :)
By Dean (63.227.47.85) on 2007-08-28 19:25

Simon says in an earlier referenced entry that "Newest chips are open source already" and points to http://www.opensparc.net/ which is a wonderful change from the past. Is it for real? Do developers have all they need for the newest chips or was it all show and no real docs? I recall reading a mention of someone not opening up the really useful documentation.

I salute the OpenBSD team for the efforts they are making to change the way things have been.
Comments
1. By Anonymous Coward (125.116.8.128) on 2007-08-28 21:06
  
  Until recently SUN only offered documentation for their CPUs. Pretty useless to a software developer without documentation for the chipset etc...
  That didn't keep them from claiming how opensource-friendly they are.
  
  Now there seems to be progress.
  
  The request scheme helps them to know what to release first,
  but that said, i still won't buy their stuff until they release hardware together with the required documentation without having to beg for it first.
By Anonymous Coward (2001:6f8:94d:5::2) on 2007-08-29 11:58

Will this include information about the
32-bit CPUs and chipsets, or is this,
again, UltraSPARC only?

Some people are actually interested in
continuing the sparc32 line, probably
even producing embedded systems based
upon the v8 CPUs and their chipsets.

Latest Articles

Sat, Nov 30
- 18:42 Initial list of 21 EuroBSDcon 2024 videos released (0)
- 18:39 Rafael Sadowski on dpb(1) (1)
Fri, Nov 29
- 09:31 -current now has more flexible performance policy (0)
Mon, Nov 25
- 07:13 unwind: wildcard in blacklist (0)
Fri, Nov 22
- 07:33 Game of Trees 0.106 released (0)
Fri, Nov 15
- 06:51 Game of Trees 0.105 released (0)
Wed, Oct 23
- 07:12 Game of Trees 0.104 released (0)
Tue, Oct 15
- 08:46 LibreSSL 4.0.0 Released (0)
Mon, Oct 14
- 07:05 sshd(8) splitting continues (1)

Credits

Copyright © 2004-2008 Daniel Hartmeier. All rights reserved. Articles and comments are copyright their respective authors, submission implies license to publish on this web site. Contents of the archive prior to April 2nd 2004 as well as images and HTML templates were copied from the fabulous original deadly.org with Jose's and Jim's kind permission. This journal runs as CGI with httpd(8) on OpenBSD, the source code is BSD licensed. undeadly \Un*dead"ly\, a. Not subject to death; immortal. [Obs.]