bacic@ncs.dnd.ca (Eugen Bacic) (10/20/89)
If my memory serves me correctly, NuBus is an IEEE standard and available to anyone who wishes to use it. It does not BELONG (thankfully) to anyone. It's like making an 802.3 network card, i.e., EtherNet. You make it and sell it, there may be some sort of fee to be paid to the IEEE or the standards committee or whatever, but no corp. owns the rights to it. emb ps: If I'm wrong, it isn't the first time...
daveh@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Haynie) (10/25/89)
in article <685@ncs.dnd.ca>, bacic@ncs.dnd.ca (Eugen Bacic) says: > Keywords: Amiga 3000 rumours, standard bus, NuBus > If my memory serves me correctly, NuBus is an IEEE standard Yes, but... > and available to anyone who wishes to use it. It does not BELONG > (thankfully) to anyone. Well, the fact that it's an official IEEE specification means that you can go to an independent organization, the IEEE, and get a spec. If anyone builds a NuBus board, they're not building it correctly unless it conforms to that spec. That's what the IEEE gets you. It also means that you can't have one vendor making secret changes to NuBus in order to get an edge up on the competition. With a privately controlled bus such as, for example, the IBM Microchannel bus, IBM could easily make changes in their backplanes that let them get an edge on other competing MCA backplanes. However, just being an IEEE spec says nothing about who _owns_ the technology. In the case of the NuBus, Texas Instruments owns several patents that you must liscence before you can build a NuBus board. TI charges for this, something like a one time fee of $5000. In this case it's very much like MCA, which for which IBM owns the patent rights and will charge you whatever their going rate is. > emb -- Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Systems Engineering) "The Crew That Never Rests" {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh PLINK: hazy BIX: hazy Too much of everything is just enough
slfields@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu (Scott L Fields) (11/16/89)
TI may disagree with NuBus being public domain. When the Apple Macintosh went with a bus, they talked to TI (which had gotten NuBus from MIT). The situation may have changed since then but as far as I know, TI has the rights to NuBus.
daveh@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Haynie) (11/18/89)
in article <1989Nov15.212314.27872@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu>, slfields@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu (Scott L Fields) says: > Keywords: Amiga 3000 rumours, standard bus, NuBus > TI may disagree with NuBus being public domain. The NuBus specification is publically available to anyone from the IEEE, as are other IEEE blessed specifications. TI owns the patents that cover basically any NuBus board, far as I know. They charge something like a couple thousand for a one-time licensing fee for any company interested in building a NuBus device. -- Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Systems Engineering) "The Crew That Never Rests" {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh PLINK: hazy BIX: hazy Too much of everything is just enough