Microchip open source USB/TCPIP stack competition with $1100+ bounty

dangerousprototypes.com

2 points·pingswept··2 comments

Previous discussion about these stacks and Microchip's licensed GCC compiler on HN here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2972794 A quote from the referenced article, also by the author of this post:

> "It’s their time-honored right to deal in closed source software – most companies do! With the chipKIT, however, Microchip wants to tap the Arduino buzz. They want promote products using the work of an open source community, but they’re not participating in the spirit of that community. It’s not illegal, it’s being a bad neighbor."

The previous post was much more negative, this one represents a complete turnaround for DangerousPrototypes. See also http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2011/09/07/microchip-responds/:

> "Bottom line, we can’t release our existing stacks because we have contractual obligations to many of our customers that prevent us from making them open source. \ So how about this: We offer a prize for anyone who writes these stacks for the community. To get started, the two that we want to target are the TCP/IP and USB stacks. Heck, who better to write these than the experts in the community…?"

I think this whole episode is fascinating. I've been expecting larger companies to make clumsy moves into open source hardware for a while now, and it's finally happening.

I'm a little surprised that the Dangerous Prototypes fellow isn't more skeptical of a $1000 prize for a TCP/IP stack. It's certainly far below market rate for porting an open source stack to a new platform. I wonder whether it will work-- will they actually get a functional stack out this gambit?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com