alt Hacker NewsI don't understand the fuss about this. Offering freeware as marketing gimmick so you can work in the most propietary closed software domain (fpgas toolchains)?
I don't understand the fuss about this. Offering freeware as marketing gimmick so you can work in the most propietary closed software domain (fpgas toolchains)?
That "freeware" is not a marketing gimmick.
Because AMD (formerly Xilinx) does not provide complete technical documentation for their FPGAs, the only way for using the products that you buy from AMD is that "freeware".
Therefore that is not "freeware", but an indispensable component of what AMD sells and advertises as "field-programmable" and customers buy from them.
Calling it "free" or "freeware" is either a shameless attempt to obfuscate what it really is or a demonstration of incompetence of the people at AMD, who fail to understand what they are selling.
Based on the previous notice from AMD, I had just canceled buying some AMD Kria modules. With this change, I will reluctantly go ahead, but I worry about being dependent of a company that may make their products unusable with this kind of decisions.