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Why does any company make open source software, then? WebKit, Android, OpenGL, and OpenCV (Intel) are certainly hard to develop. OSS development has proven to

• Thimothy 11y ago
  "Compiling" for a FPGA is far harder than your regular processor compiling, where you "just" translate your high level code to machine code. Here is a link that explains the process: http://curtis.io/others-work/open-tooling-for-fpgas http://curtis.io/others-work/open-tooling-for-fpgas
  • Hytosys 11y ago
    Right, I understand. Logic synthesis entails constraint solving and other big domain-specific challenges. It is a very difficult problem. (So are web rendering, OS development, graphics API design, and computer vision.)
• minthd 11y ago
  If we look at WebKit, And OpenCV and i think OpenGL , the software is really a complement to the real business and are less hard to develop than the main products.Also they are all in the API business - where developers demand open source and have enough power . As for android - Again it was a strategic necessity for Google, since it needed that distribution point for it's huge ad business. Operating systems are a winner takes all business and the most effective, lowest risk strategy to get there was open sourcing, even though it's kind of a loss leader. And even with only partially open-sourcing android , Google is at constant risk of losing control of android. The situation in FPGA is different - if altera opens the tool, xilinx and other companies will probably use it , and we'll probably see multiple companies compete on the business.