Rämixx500 – An Open Hardware remake of the Commodore Amiga 500+ mainboard
github.com
github.com
The terms even become more restrictive as the Euro inflates!
The OP have to place certain components for interop based on technical restrictions, other details are bound by the form factor of the components themselves. In theory none of that can be covered by copyright (nor design rights) because it's primarily technical, not artistic in nature.
You should be able to copy nearly all of a circuit board copyright free, only the artistic elements (logos, say) being reserved (and trademarks are probably the main restriction there). Patents can't encumber this.
So, really Commodore's devices _should_ be free to make technical duplicates of. YMMV.
In USA you can likely dump a ROM from an original board, and that might even not be copyright in some jurisdictions under right-to-repair or similar legislation. In UK it's more than likely tortuous without a license to copy to the new board; we don't have Fair Use [and] don't have rights to format shift or backup.
Fair Use can work for commercial goods, but rarely does AFAIK (from reading caselaw).
That's probably one of the very few ways to make a lot of money out of Amiga IP.
No, it's not. That's just not what the term means.
> The restrictions only apply on reselling it for profit, which is an acceptable condition.
I doubt it. That would be enough to disqualify a software licence as Open Source [0], and I imagine it disqualifies a hardware project from being Open Source Hardware too [1] [2].
[0] https://stackoverflow.com/a/8212363/
[1] https://www.oshwa.org/faq/
[2] https://opensource.com/law/15/2/intro-open-hardware-licensin...
On the Amiga side every project seems to have licensing which seems to always be defined such that someone thinks they're going to make a successful commercial project out of it Any Day Now. It's strange.
Considering the machines are now ancient and people put a lot of effort in to keeping the hardware relevant, I personally don't mind paying the extra.
I am also reminded of how Carl Sassenrath thought it would be a good idea to release Rebol under only a proprietary license. The Rebol project, which initially had (IIRC) enormous hype and mindshare during development, tanked, and I think this was large reason why. This is despite the time being just right for a new good scripting language: PHP and Python were just beginning, and Perl was slowly dying.
(Rebol was eventually released under an Open Source license in 2012, when nobody cared about Rebol anymore.)
That said, I don't mean to say that I think the licensing terms of this project are unfair. It seems reasonable if you believe you owe a lot of your work to someone else that you want it to generate some public good that will benefit everybody.
So remaking the mainboard is certainly possible, getting the custom chips seems to be much harder. The chips can't be consider that advanced anymore, so I wonder if you can get some Chinese manufacturer to duplicate them, if you had working chips for them to copy?
> There are other projects like this one out there, but none of them is Open Source and none of them comes with both schematics and board. This is a big advantage, since anyone can modify the board and make new improved versions, as long as they release their modifications it with the same license. I have come up with some ideas for improvements, feel free to help :).
I believe reverse engineering the silicon still takes serious amount of money. But is it really required? Reimplementing the chips from scratch with FPGAs is a much more practical option, since everything is already pretty much documented by the simulator community.
And it appears that someone has already done something on it.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimig
> Minimig started around January 2005 as a proof of concept by Dutch electrical engineer Dennis van Weeren. He intended Minimig as the answer to the ongoing discussions within the Amiga community on implementing the Amiga custom chipset using an FPGA. The project's source code and schematics were released under version 3 of the GNU General Public Licence on 25 July 2007.
What would be very interesting would be a way to compile software emulators that have very consistent sets of rules for how hardware is expressed (such as MAME) into an FPGA.
To replace a failed ASIC on a physical Amiga (or a Amiga replica), which will be unavailable in the future. Don't forget the original topic of the article is a recreation of the physical Amiga.
There will be people interested in the accurate replication of the hardware. For those there is no replacement for the real thing or something very close to it.
THough as there battery on the Amiga and many old kit are known to expire in epic ways and leak all over the place, which will quickly kill the board, and depending how stored - will take out some of the chips as well. So for many this will be good for those with access to those chips, those chips will be the hard part sourcing wise if you need those.
And that's when I approved their effort.
I can't talk for the US, but in Europe where I live there are some amazingly cheap options for prototype batches. You could probably order a prototype batch (2~3 boards) for around 150 euro with a 7 day delivery. Ordering from China from EU will probably take around a month to arrive.
It may be useful for smaller pcb's and a fast turnaround, but given everything at the moment, is anyone really in a rush?