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A RISC-V chip with with secret RTL (not to mention the layout) does not qualify as open-hardware. Otherwise MS Word would be open-source software just because it implements the Open Document Format (ODF).

The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research () is announcing funding opportunities for open-source EDA development (careful: text in formal German only!):
elektronikforschung.de/foerder

i will be keynote speaking at Free Silicon Conference 2023 at Sorbonne University, Paris. The conference goes from July 10-12. wiki.f-si.org/index.php/FSiC20

We are glad to announce the next edition of the Free Silicon Conference () which will be held in Paris on July 10,11,12 2023.

The tentative program is:
wiki.f-si.org/index.php/FSiC20

Please help us spreading the voice, and please propose or suggest ideas by answering this toot or by writing at fsic2023'at'f-si.org.

The EU proposal we submitted in October last year HAS BEEN ACCEPTED!!

It is a "Coordination and Support Action" for open-source chip development.

The full text of the submitted version can be downloaded at:
wiki.f-si.org/index.php/Horizo

The project begins today.

During the "Grant Agreement" preparation some significant modifications were requested. In particular, F-Si is no longer the coordinator, but EDI in Latvia.

The Free Silicon Conference 2022 is over and most videos are available on:
https:peertube.f-si.org

Watch the keynote speech by Frank Karlitschek founder of
"Why Open Hardware and Open Software are necessary for our future":
peertube.f-si.org/videos/watch

@Karlitschek thanks again for your contribution!

The next Free Silicon Conference will be held in Paris on July 7,8,9 2022 (COVID permitting) and we need your help to reach out to new people!

We want to bring together followers of the free/libre chip idea, people who love sharing experience, code and tools.

Is there any name/entity you would like to see or to meet? If so, please drop us a note.

If your idea is not listed yet on wiki.f-si.org/index.php/FSiC20 you should definitely let us know!

We have submitted a proposal for a European call entitled "Coordination and Support Action (CSA) for Open Source Hardware for ultra-low-power, secure microprocessors":

ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tend

Our proposal can be downloaded at:
wiki.f-si.org/index.php/Horizo

We feel that sufficiently new ideas have been generated for justifying the publication. This will further increase the of the selection process.

If you have any comments please leave them below.


The affair shows that complex systems have backdoors that can be turned against everyone by malicious interests. This could affect hardware too.

theguardian.com/world/2021/jul
clamour-for-investigations-into-use-of-nso-spyware

The general discussion should nevertheless not drift away from the question about the (il-)legitimacy of such companies/government
actions.

An article in German entitled "Consequences of the US boycott: China builds up its own EDA industry "

elektronikpraxis.vogel.de/folg

By-the-way, the problem with EDA access touches Europe as well, and Free and Open Source is an alternative too.

Next week, Thursday May 18, follow the online session on the future of European open hardware, hosted by the Next Generation Internet (NGI)
Forum:

nlnet.nl/news/2021/20210507-NG

Streaming is via BigBlueButton and does not require registration.

" from 2011 to 2019 vulnerable to two new attacks"

zdnet.com/article/amd-processo

"With Collide+Probe, an attacker can monitor a victim’s memory accesses without knowledge of physical addresses or shared memory when time-sharing a logical core. With Load+Reload, we exploit the way predictor to obtain highly-accurate memory-access traces of victims on the same physical ."

mlq.me/download/takeaway.pdf

@dredmorbius

Quoting the Washington Post:

* "Crypto’s shift to **electronic** products [..]. Foreign governments clamored for systems that seemed clearly superior to the old clunky mechanical devices but in fact were **easier** for U.S. spies to read."

* "a **circuit-based** system could be made to appear that it was producing endless streams of randomly generated characters, while in reality it would repeat itself at short enough intervals for experts [..] to **crack** the pattern."

"The intelligence coup of the century"

For decades, the read the encrypted communications of allies and adversaries exploiting backdoors in silicon chips.

washingtonpost.com/graphics/20

Free and open-source silicon will allow everybody to audit the full chip design, from netlists down to layout.

Keep up with Free silicon!

The Free Silicon Foundation adopts a different funding model than and promotes independence.

We think that certain sponsorships are problematic not only because of an evident conflict of interest (e.g. vs ), but also because they induce some people and/or organizations like our not to attend , therefore impacting, among others, the plurality of views on topics which can be as delicate as licences (2020.copyleftconf.org).

@aral @xerz

We did not suspect that Google is since 2013 not only **a** sponsor, but **the main** sponsor, of the Free Software Foundation Europe @fsfe :
fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus-2013 . Thanks for the hint!

This is like if ExxonMobil was financing Greenpeace.

Just like for the SFC @conservancy above, we removed the from the white paper.


@aral

We were not aware that @conservancy is financed by Google. Thanks for pointing this out!

The choice of including the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) in the paper was inspired by the role of Bradley M. Kuhn in the creation of the Affero GPL (sfconservancy.org/blog/?author).

Since an involvement of Google conflicts with our standards (as stated in our statute wiki.f-si.org/index.php/F-Si_S), we have removed the SFC from the white paper. Anyhow, they have not provided any feedback to it.

We prepared a white paper for the containing recommendations about as encouraged last November:

wiki.f-si.org/index.php/White_

Please discuss it or endorse it by replying to this thread.
The paper will be delivered on January 31.

A first draft was shared in December with:

* april.org @aprilorg
* fsfe.org @fsfe
* fsf.org @fsf
* Aral Balkan @aral
* waag.org @waag
* sfconservancy.org @conservancy
* gpl-violations.org
* commonsnetwork.eu

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