I love their explicit endorsement of Open Source toolchains. Just one question:
Could they actually forbid reverse engineering of their bitstream? Isn’t such reverse engineering explicitly allowed by law in most countries? Can we really waive this right just by agreeing to a EULA, which if I recall correctly, does not even have the full force of contract law behind it?
Could they actually forbid reverse engineering of their bitstream?
Even if they couldn’t, having that clause in the EULA means that any professional work in that space at a company large enough to have a legal department (or a lawyer on retainer) would have to pass lawyer review, and lawyers will take the simple & safe option of saying “that clause may have no effect, but we’re not going to be the first to find out in court” unless pressed really hard to make it possible. As such it’s a mild deterrent for that scenario, but a relatively effective one.
And they probably never cared for everything smaller where there’s no lawyer that could interfere.
So, from their point of view: no disadvantage to put in that clause, but it might scare off would-be reverse engineers that could use the knowledge to spoil Lattice’s business. That only changed when open source toolchains became a thing people (and corporate customers, probably) asked for, because through that, having the clause in there became a disadvantage.
I love their explicit endorsement of Open Source toolchains. Just one question:
Could they actually forbid reverse engineering of their bitstream? Isn’t such reverse engineering explicitly allowed by law in most countries? Can we really waive this right just by agreeing to a EULA, which if I recall correctly, does not even have the full force of contract law behind it?
Even if they couldn’t, having that clause in the EULA means that any professional work in that space at a company large enough to have a legal department (or a lawyer on retainer) would have to pass lawyer review, and lawyers will take the simple & safe option of saying “that clause may have no effect, but we’re not going to be the first to find out in court” unless pressed really hard to make it possible. As such it’s a mild deterrent for that scenario, but a relatively effective one.
And they probably never cared for everything smaller where there’s no lawyer that could interfere.
So, from their point of view: no disadvantage to put in that clause, but it might scare off would-be reverse engineers that could use the knowledge to spoil Lattice’s business. That only changed when open source toolchains became a thing people (and corporate customers, probably) asked for, because through that, having the clause in there became a disadvantage.
This is great news! I was just starting to get into the Yosys/SymbiFlow projects.