I have noticed some comments made by OpenSTA regarding the iEDA project: https://github.com/The-OpenROAD-Project/OpenSTA/blob/96348ebe58eaa5aeb5f60a21e4146321722f7b0e/README.md?plain=1#L67-L75
As a manager of the iEDA project, I am drafting this issue to express our gratitude for the interest in our project from the EDA community, and provide some clarifications regarding the questions raised by OpenSTA. I also want to acknowledge our mistakes and engage in self-criticism. We do appreciate any constructive feedback and value this criticism from the OpenSTA project.
Firstly, the goal of iEDA was to create an open platform that enables seamless integration of electronic design automation (EDA) tools and facilitates research in this field. In pursuit of this goal, we have studied software solutions from numerous predecessors in the field, and we are immensely grateful for their contributions. OpenSTA, in particular, has been a great pioneer, we have learned a lot from it, and really appreciate the work it made.
Secondly, we would like to apologize for inadvertently replacing the license of several source files. Now, regarding the issue at hand, we would like to provide the following explanation: Restricted by the mNDA with Fab and some IP vendors, which used to provide PDK and IP to us, for an efficient design experience while not violating the NDA with them, the iEDA project was designed with the in-house flow from Nov, 2020 to May, 2023. During the closed-source development of iEDA, we originally intended to use the GPL license for our design. However, in preparation for open-source, we considered the limitation of GPL, and decided to use a more non-strict license (Mulan-PSL-2) to be more community-friendly. As part of the preparations for the open-source work, we used a script to automatically remove all non-third-party licenses and replace them with the Mulan-PSL-2 license. This operation was performed on our in-house code base, and sorry not being able to provide any link to you. But we believe that the open-source license is an essential part of the project, and we have taken steps to ensure compliance with all licenses after open-sourcing the project. For example,re-added the BSD license for some file in this commit: https://github.com/OSCC-Project/iEDA/commit/e96ba9a48a31b6d3ddf58837e5f9969621afe05e
However, as mentioned in the OpenSTA readme, we still missed something, due to our buggy script which was used to do the internal clean-up for the original GPL license, license of some codes were removed:
As a result, these files were not provided with the GPL-3 license when we open-source our project. I think there are three aspects for us to blame:
iEDA has a "third_party" folder https://github.com/OSCC-Project/iEDA/tree/master/src primarily used for storing the codes from other open-source projects, but the iSTA contributor forgot to place these files from OpenSTA into the "third_party" folder
Our internal code review was totally a mess, failing to spot this issue during the code review
When doing the final open source license review flow, we also didn’t notice this part of code
To rectify this situation, we are taking immediate action. We will promptly update the iEDA software to include the GPL-3 license, ensuring compliance with the open-source community's guidelines:
Finally, we would like to reiterate our commitment to open-source development and iEDA's continued success. We will strive to address any remaining concerns from the open-source community and ensure that we adhere to the highest ethical standards in all our future endeavors. We value the principles of open-source software and are committed to upholding the highest standards of integrity and compliance. We sincerely apologize for any confusion or concern this may have caused.
If there are any further questions or anyone requires additional information, please do not hesitate to reply in this issue. We do appreciate any criticism, which helps us a lot to improve the project quality.
I have noticed some comments made by OpenSTA regarding the iEDA project: https://github.com/The-OpenROAD-Project/OpenSTA/blob/96348ebe58eaa5aeb5f60a21e4146321722f7b0e/README.md?plain=1#L67-L75 As a manager of the iEDA project, I am drafting this issue to express our gratitude for the interest in our project from the EDA community, and provide some clarifications regarding the questions raised by OpenSTA. I also want to acknowledge our mistakes and engage in self-criticism. We do appreciate any constructive feedback and value this criticism from the OpenSTA project.
Firstly, the goal of iEDA was to create an open platform that enables seamless integration of electronic design automation (EDA) tools and facilitates research in this field. In pursuit of this goal, we have studied software solutions from numerous predecessors in the field, and we are immensely grateful for their contributions. OpenSTA, in particular, has been a great pioneer, we have learned a lot from it, and really appreciate the work it made.
Secondly, we would like to apologize for inadvertently replacing the license of several source files. Now, regarding the issue at hand, we would like to provide the following explanation: Restricted by the mNDA with Fab and some IP vendors, which used to provide PDK and IP to us, for an efficient design experience while not violating the NDA with them, the iEDA project was designed with the in-house flow from Nov, 2020 to May, 2023. During the closed-source development of iEDA, we originally intended to use the GPL license for our design. However, in preparation for open-source, we considered the limitation of GPL, and decided to use a more non-strict license (Mulan-PSL-2) to be more community-friendly. As part of the preparations for the open-source work, we used a script to automatically remove all non-third-party licenses and replace them with the Mulan-PSL-2 license. This operation was performed on our in-house code base, and sorry not being able to provide any link to you. But we believe that the open-source license is an essential part of the project, and we have taken steps to ensure compliance with all licenses after open-sourcing the project. For example,re-added the BSD license for some file in this commit: https://github.com/OSCC-Project/iEDA/commit/e96ba9a48a31b6d3ddf58837e5f9969621afe05e
However, as mentioned in the OpenSTA readme, we still missed something, due to our buggy script which was used to do the internal clean-up for the original GPL license, license of some codes were removed:
As a result, these files were not provided with the GPL-3 license when we open-source our project. I think there are three aspects for us to blame:
To rectify this situation, we are taking immediate action. We will promptly update the iEDA software to include the GPL-3 license, ensuring compliance with the open-source community's guidelines:
Finally, we would like to reiterate our commitment to open-source development and iEDA's continued success. We will strive to address any remaining concerns from the open-source community and ensure that we adhere to the highest ethical standards in all our future endeavors. We value the principles of open-source software and are committed to upholding the highest standards of integrity and compliance. We sincerely apologize for any confusion or concern this may have caused.
If there are any further questions or anyone requires additional information, please do not hesitate to reply in this issue. We do appreciate any criticism, which helps us a lot to improve the project quality.
The iEDA team