[XviD-devel] Re: Xvid Developement (Hardware)

[Christoph Lampert]

Hello Ahmad,

before you start implementing any part of XVID in hardware, please take
the time to read our software license (GPL) which can be found in any 
distribution of XVID or at http://www.fsf.org/licenses 

I general, hardware implementations are _not_ compatible with the GPL,
since it makes it impossible for users to modify and redistribute the
program. However, I don't know how FPGAs fits into this picture. 
Please check this at http://www.fsf.org or in the corresponding
newsgroups/mailing-list .

If it turns out that FPGA are not compatible with GPL, you may create an
implementation and use it at your will, but you may _not distribute_ it in
any way, neither commercially, nor for free. 

When these general questions are settled, I'm sure many people at our
mailing list xvid-devel at xvid.org to which you can subscribe at our
homepage www.xvid.org will be willing to help you. 

Best regards 

Christoph Lampert


On Wed, 19 Feb 2003, Ahmad Al-kilani wrote:
> Dear Xvid Developer:
> My Name is Ahmad M. Alkilani, I am a graduate student in the Jordan University of
> Science
> and Technology. Being interested in your work, we have decided to go one step further.
> This
> step involves the hardware implementation of a part of your Xvid codec as part of a
> reconfigurable Processing graduation project. This means that we are tending to make a
> reconfigurable processor using FPGA technology and have one of its configurations
> handle the
> processing power bottle neck of Xvid (encoding/Decoding).
> Thus far everything sounds nice, but we don't know how ur codec really functions! I
> mean
> where the need of all the processing power really is within your code. What techniques
> Xvid
> uses, and what exactly is in need to be implemented using hardware and thus getting
> much
> much higher speeds.
> Well this is where you come in "hopefully". We are asking of your help to guide us
> through.
> We really need answers to those questions, that is if you are willing to help.
> We considerably thank you for your help, and hope you good luck.
> Best Regards,
> Ahmad Al-kilani,
> amk_com at hotmail.com
> amkilani at just.edu.jo