[Cryptech Core] multiple offers...

[Jacob]

Peter,

Regarding open source, I would like to stress the difference between SW 
and HW:
While SW can be open source and GPLed or Public-Domained or what have 
you, and can be developed with open source tool chain (to a limit), this 
is not the case with modern electronic HW:

- The MCU and the FPGA cores are proprietary, and are licensed to you to 
use. All the components on the board are copyrighted and patented.
- The Xilinx design tools that are being used in the Cryptech FPGA dev 
process are proprietary, and many cost money.
The free version (Vivado WEBPack) is copyrighted and licensed, and is 
limited in capabilities (no logic analyzer, no synthesis).
- The USB protocol (even the connectors and cabling) is heavily 
patented, copyrighted and licensed by usb.org

And so on.

Now for the PCB layout program. KiCAD is open source, and since CERN 
started to put some serious effort into it last year it started to get 
some modern features. But we are not there yet. However, the database 
format is unique and I doubt that there is a meaningful SI/PI analysis 
software that would accept it.
There are propriety and copyrighted layout systems that are so much more 
capable. If you want to do a complex board fast and good, you need to 
use them unless you are a purist. They are just tools to get your open 
source product to the market fast - just like the patented soldering 
tool and the soldering alloy wire formulation you use to fabricate the 
noise module, or the patented computer that you use as a platform to run 
your dev system on.

Three more comments and I am done:

-People I know who develop an open source Windows package are perfectly 
OK to use Visual Studio. The debugging facilities alone are worth it, 
and the result is still open-source.

-Bunnie used Altium (licensed and closed and copyrighted) to design his 
Novena board. He still calls his system "open source HW" and Cryptech is 
happy to use it.

- I think the greatness of the Cryptech project is that the software and 
the hardware is open source and has a strong trust chain.
However, I maintain that the dev tools can be closed source - but 
reasonably available (possibly at a price, the less the better) to any 
interested party.

Jacob